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On with the Garden Show!
by DIG-IT
Thirteen display gardens evoke “A Garden State of Mind” this February at The Flower, Garden & Outdoor Living Show of New Jersey at the New Jersey Convention Center in Edison. Featured here are three gardens.
Visitors will enter the lobby through a classic Maypole Garden presented by The Garden Club of New Jersey. Life-sized twig figures dance around a maypole in a garden of hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, azaleas and other springtime plants. Past president Ruth Paul says the garden represents the club’s traditional interest in May Day, when members hang baskets of flowers on doorways of homes and exhibit other baskets in town offices just to wish them “Happy Spring.”
The club has other features at the show, including a juried standard flower show in the design room. The room full of floral arrangements is accented by a garden tucked into each corner. “They are garden vignettes,” says Paul. “One might be a patio scene that would incorporate a garden, as you wished your backyard would look.” “She attended the English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Gardens in London. I wanted to distinguish myself, so I went to England and worked one on one.”
Another designer that caters to the dreamer in all of us lucky folk is Susan Cohan. Her interest is in “trying to make garden spaces and what we see around the house more personal instead of cookie-cutter.” She has owned Susan Cohan Gardens in Chatham, New Jersey, since May 2003. With a background in fashion, jewelry and accessory design, and academic administration, Cohan has the artistry and business knowledge ready to work for her. “I’m using everything I know,” she says.
Cohan landed the spot in the show when two small spaces became available. Like a true entrepreneur, she grabbed the opportunity to show what she can do. She has the smallest garden, right next to the entrance.
Her piece d’occasion is called “Garden Dream State” in which she “combines traditional garden elements used in a funky new way.” This is accomplished with flowers of pale pinks and whites, crushed pink and grey granite paths with blue glass mosaic stepping stones, and wooden structures in shades of blue. White chiffon canopies shimmer with a silver luster and float up to a central deck, blazing the way for a visitor.
Cohan uses elements of humor in her work. "Soap bubble" gazing balls are scattered on the ground throughout the garden. “They’re like the bubbles that came down from Glinda the Good Witch,” she says. And the allee of lawn grass in pots ... sometimes that’s where it belongs. She also likes easy-to-install and low maintenance designs, such as the allee.
Her garden is dreamy and soft, she says. “I wanted to create something with very formal structure to the overall design. I looked at Moroccan Pleasure Gardens. I wanted formal axes and straight paths, but as a sub-structure. The challenge was to soften it. I wanted the juxtaposition of soft flowers and soft fabric with hard granite and brick and wood. As a jewelry designer, I am very materials-oriented. I wanted that ‘precious’ quality.”
Cohan’s gardens are crafted and, she says, “not just built and perfectly maintained. Gardens are fashion.”
Another garden with a gentle theme, but carried out on a different scale, is the “Serenity Garden” created by Tom Bove, owner of Tech Turf, a design/build firm in West Paterson, New Jersey. His father started the company in 1965 and he took it over in '94. Bove’s style is also soft, and his personal style is loose, a quality that comes with experience.
He says that although he came up with a really nice design for the garden, the final result will depend on how the stored plants fare. “I adjust it on the fly,” he says. It’s one of the perils of live plants. “Ideally the garden evokes a serene, relaxing feeling.” He intends to accomplish this with flowing lines, sounds of water, color and texture. Instead of rigid right angles, or that boxy, patio feel, the garden will have more of a natural look.
Bove designed the garden around a central pond with a waterfall, a small patio and several passageways that wind through flowering plants. A serpentine path made of pavers is surrounded by the planted, mulched beds.
But things are not always what they seem, especially at a show. In order to allow the easy flow of people through the garden, Bove designed the passageways larger than they would be at a home. He also over-plants the gardens with blooming shrubs like azaleas, native PJM rhododendron (he says they’re great but the deer think so too), and bulbs. “Everything is over-planted at home shows. It won’t look like this if it’s planted at your house because everyone wants to see masses of big colorful plants.”
Come check out the gardens at the show from February 19 to 22. Come see hundreds of exhibitors and our favorite guru, Ralph Snodsmith. See our feature
Garden author Caroline Seebohm will also be there.
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published January 31, 2004
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