AFTER 38 years, the L.A. Garden Show is finally on the verge of its \o7quinceanera\f7.
For many gardeners, it's a coming of age that's more than 23 years overdue. For decades, Southern California -- arguably the gardening capital of the country -- has watched other cities stage sequoia-sized exhibitions with lavish demonstration gardens and standing-room-only talks by botanical experts of national renown.
In Philadelphia, the annual garden show draws more than a quarter of a million people, whereas organizers of the L.A. show this weekend are hoping for 10,000. In Seattle, the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in February had 100 lectures aimed at gardeners of all levels; the L.A. Garden Show will have 10. The San Francisco Flower and Garden show a month ago had 23 garden displays. L.A. will have 12.
And that's the good news.
Mark Wourms, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, has led a crusade to raise the size, quality and prominence of the local show, doubling the number of landscape designers crafting displays and vendors selling plants since last year. It's Wourms' statement that the show -- and, indeed, the arboretum -- is not just for San Gabriel Valley residents but for all of Southern California.
One highlight this year is the premiere of a permanent exhibit at the arboretum: the Madagascar Spiny Forest, the Western Hemisphere's largest public collection of the island's bizarre flora. Other displays include designer Heather Lenkin's 900-square-foot garden planted with nine varieties of roses and mulched with colored glass, all to re-create the design of a Tiffany & Co. brooch; and Workshop Levitas' 250-foot bamboo installation, dubbed Minipi, that snakes its way from the main lawn to the Madagascar forest.
"Los Angeles leads the world in outdoor lifestyle," says Wourms, who has seen membership at the arboretum triple since he arrived in 2004. "What better place to have a world-class garden show than this setting?"
Indeed, Wourms dreams that the event formerly known as the Baldwin Bonanza plant sale (after the Arboretum's Baldwin Avenue address) will become an international attraction, in the same league as London's Chelsea Flower Show and the four major U.S. shows -- Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francisco.
