In my last Canada Blooms post, I explained how the feature garden builders get selected to participate in the festival. There is a theme for each year that is picked by the Canada Blooms management. This year the theme is ‘Wild’. We, the garden designers, must come up with something that fits within that theme. Our landscaping style has a natural feel so the theme wild wasn’t that far of a stretch for us.
This year, Adam Bienenstock of Bieenenstock Natural Playgrounds, approached me and asked if I wanted to team up with him for a build. What he proposed was combining our spaces and creating a very large garden that represents a Carolinian forest trail. He was already working with the legendary artist, Robert Bateman to promote the newly appointed Robert Bateman Trail located in Toronto. I thought it was a great opportunity to work with some talented individuals and have a little fun. We, will be in charge of all of the water features found in both gardens. Needless to say, this created a bit of confusion because we now had to redesign our display to accommodate our newly appointed space.
A few weeks later, we were contacted by Harrowsmith’s Truly Canadian Almanac. They wanted to write an article on one of the feature garden builders, and they chose us! Harrowsmith felt that our display, and us as a company, shared their same values. Our love of sustainability and natural design made us a perfect fit. The name of the article was titled ‘Wet, Wild, & Canadian’. Perfect. That’s now the name of our garden. Which I might add, sprouted a sigh of relief from everyone I know (my wife especially) because the title “The Inevitable Outcome” that I came up with, was truly hated by all. Myself included.
Our revised 2014 Canada Blooms Garden
So here we are, 16 days away from when we start construction of our display, and I couldn’t be happier. We are working with some amazing people this year and I know that it will turn out beautifully.
Next week I’ll talk about some of the things we have to do to prepare for the show. We only have 5 days to construct our garden so a lot of components need to be pre-constructed and assembled on site. This proves to be a challenging endeavour to say the least!
Click here to read a preview of the Harrowsmith article featuring Genoscape!
Sincerely,
Landscape Joe
