The Northwest Flower and Garden Show Effect
Photo Credit: The Northwest Flower & Garden Festival
Have you considered creating one of the magnificent Northwest Flower and Garden Festival display gardens? We are fortunate to have a world-class garden show and one of the largest garden events in the Pacific Northwest in our own backyard. An effect happens when you participate as a designer at the show, and this could be your moment to shine.
The yearly festival is your audience, your community, your people! Up to 60,000 visitors come to the show, and they are ready to chase away the winter greys. I am a past garden creator with eight design installations over the years. After doing my first design in 2004, it was a big turnaround for making an audience aware of who I am and what I do. I had already been a speaker at the show, but I wanted to get some attention for my design business at the time. The garden was a way to get my work out to a target audience, and if you are a marketer or are into brand awareness, then you already know a golden rule is finding your target audience. The show’s effect is also long ranging and promotional after all the hard work is over. Name recognition is huge, and the show has social media experts and a website that will continually promote you and the garden you design. Tag, talk, post, participate - it all works together.
Visitors are not always looking for designers at the show, but your name will be on their minds in the future. You will have inspired something, like a small detail of how you used a plant or artwork in your display and, as importantly, how your garden made them feel. Did it evoke something that intrigued them or made them stop, linger, and want to hear more? You will become a resource and possibly have a new client in the mix.
Designing a show garden is a way to tell your story. You may only have a matter of seconds as the mobs of crowds go by, but when you create a visual that needs no verbiage, it tells the story, grabs attention, and speaks without words. Gardens that do this well begin the rippling effect of branding and recognition. How do you capture the effect of being a featured designer at the show?
Teamwork with APLDWA
Artful plantings around a sculpture in a vignette along the stairway in the 2025 APLDWA Team Garden
Photo: Sue Goetz
APLDWA creates a garden at the show to promote awareness of what a professional designer can do for a client. We share with the thousands of visitors who we are as an organization and how professional designers can help people create the garden of their dreams. The magic is having a living brochure to show the caliber of work done by a pool of talent. When your heart is in the organization, and you have a passion for promoting what your peers in the industry can offer, being part of the APLDWA garden is a great way to get involved with the show. You have the support of APLDWA and can assemble a team to reach a common goal of promoting the organization. Another effect is business-to-business connections.
As Lloyd Glasscock, Garden Coordinator with the show, told me in a recent interview, attendees are not just homeowners looking for landscaping; the show is also a significant opportunity to meet contractors, and suppliers to create relationships that help grow APLD members and sponsorships. Being a part of a group garden is a good place to start if you want to join the team to help grow and network with your peers at APLDWA.
Designing As Your Business
If you want to expand awareness for yourself and your business, creating a garden display will get you there. As Lloyd says, people do a garden for three reasons: business, ego, and fun. Yes, there is work. Yes, there will be blood, sweat, and tears - there is no glossing over that building a garden in three days on the fourth floor of the Convention Center in downtown Seattle takes a lot of planning and organization. But ask anyone who has done it, and they will tell you the rewards. Show days open to the public are an instant affirmation and ego boost with compliments on your presentation, and then the after-effect is a referral-building network. “I saw you at the show,” “…on social media,” etc. They have already vetted you and seen your work. You will succeed when you see the garden as a creative outlet to power up your brand and business. If you seek only a medal and awards, there must be more to it, or you will be disappointed because the judging is subjective. There are never any guarantees what the medals will bring, but there are guarantees based on how you put yourself out there. Attend the show, stand by your garden, talk to people, brag, and promote your participation on social media; it’s all part of this.
Then, there should always be an element of fun. Creating a garden, which you can only dream up in your head, is exciting. It may not be something you can put in a client’s space, but you have a lot of freedom to show them your wild, imaginative creativity in a show garden. The accomplishment also brings an extensive network and community of people you work around for the entire process. They become your kin, your cheerleaders, and a fun group to be a part of.
Congrats to Garden Creator APLDWA members at the 2025 show:
Rejuvenating Waters: A Journey to Vitality, The APLDWA Team Garden, co-designed by Smitha Navda, and Robin Parsons, with sponsor Terrain and the team of APLDWA volunteers who worked tirelessly to create beauty and represent APLDWA.
A look through a custom-made arbor into the garden of Rejuvenating Waters: A Journey to Vitality, where a fusion of plants and metal artistry came together beautifully. Produced by the APLDWA design team.
Photo: Sue Goetz
The Gathering Garden - Where Friends & Family Come Together by member Kryssie Maybay, Kismet Design,
The beautiful blue pool and glass art highlight this fabulous wood sliding deck in a fun gathering space created by Kismet Design.
Photo: Sue Goetz
The Garden of Vows by member Jessi Bloom, NW Bloom Ecological Services,
Garden Designer Jessi Bloom built a garden with a full-sized glass greenhouse with an elegant setting inside where wedding vows were exchanged at the show!
Photo: Sue Goetz
If you are interested in being on the design team for APLDWA, email contactus@apldwa.org
For participation as your business for a creator application, contact Lloyd Glasscock at lloydG@mpeshows.com