One of the greatest joys in my life is the Pacific Northwest Flower and Garden Show. I go every year and wander among the display gardens, crafts, art, and products I could never afford. I think of it as being something like visiting Narnia. We walk through the doors and suddenly the flowers are brighter than in our gardens that still sleep. In early February my garden is like it being “always winter and never Christmas.” It’s really pretty dead, and this year it was still covered with patches of snow.
My garden in winter.
The light colored leaves are my baby sage. The dark colored leaves on either side are the hyacinths. The garden show is spring before it is really time for spring. The flowers bloom without frost damage or water spots. The air is scented with fragrant hyacinths while my hyacinths at home are just sticking their noses out of the ground as if testing the temperature to see if they really want to come up and bloom. This year, they don’t.
As in a proper Narnia, the walls and gardens are both exotic and funky. A garden gate must have a window for the big people to look out and a lower window for the little people to look out. Narnia has houses for big people, little people, foreign people, nomads and of course the tower for the princess.
I loved these garden gates, but they are in the category of things ordinary people can't afford.
 A Moorish style garden. I liked the colors here. |  The house for little people |
And the tower for the princess. This was in the Irish garden.
This baby herbs looked sweet but the container is nowhere big enough for them. The sense of fantasy can be something as big as a dragon or as little as an herb garden. I looked at the charming little herb garden with the sweet little herbs growing so obediently in their little rows. This is Narnia, folks. I do grow herbs. My bay tree is ten feet tall. My rosemary is six feet tall despite the heavy pruning I give it every year. The parsley has gone dormant, but the thyme thrives. My tender herbs grow two feet tall and shade out or just overpower anything with in two feet of them. They aren’t nice. They’re thugs. They have to be in order to survive in the reality of my garden.
 My sweet bay tree with the lighter colored six foot rosemary in front of it. |  Garden thyme takes up more room than you think. |
The tent was enchanting with it's blown glass chandelier.
A tent in a garden is a wonderful place to hang out and listen to the birds, the wind in the trees, and the coyotes howling in the enchanted forest. At the garden show even the tent is unreal with it’s blown glass candelabra and rugs on the floor. In my own enchanted forest we can hear the wind and the birds and even the coyotes, but the tent better have a tarp over it to keep the rain out and why in the real world, does everything have to be an unnatural blue?
 We do have a tent in the garden. Hubby likes to go out there and listen to the wind and wild things. |  The tent has a chair, a cot and a heater--no chandeliers here. |
I want glowing orbs in my garden. Where do I get glowing orbs? What I do have is the rope lights inside the cold frame. This is just not the same as soft pink glowing orbs. These would be so lovely in the enchanted forest.
I fell in love with the pink orbs. They would look so magical in my enchanted forest.
Cold frame for collards and cabbage. I use the rope light for light and a bit of heat. We've been eating the collards so this system works.
This little garden with all it's tidy plants would so not last in my yard where everything tends to sprawl and crowd out the neighbors. In Narnia, all the plants grow in tidy rows or circles. The sense of unreality expands in a garden with topiary, as all the shrubs grow in their proper form. Alas, the fantasy explodes when we find the garden designer working hard to keep his display looking fresh. I thought he would make a nice element in my garden but security got testy when I tried to drag him out to my car and stuff him in the trunk along with my new pruners and bulbs. I can still hire help from the local garden store, so I left this worker where he was.
 Tony misted to keep his topiary looking fresh. Narnia is more work than we might think. |  I'm extremely thankful for my garden workers. |
Tony works at Redwood Builders Landscaping and asked that I post his sign if I took a picture of his reality.
I took lots of pictures of waterfalls. I have some excellent places for waterfalls in my garden. Alas, even Narnia has it’s troubles. It lasts only five days before the whole thing is dismantled and disappears until next year. Meanwhile, my own garden will grow and bloom. The ducks and goose will waddle around eating slugs and pecking at weeds. They add a sense of funky movement to the garden. The birds come back from their warm winter homes. My garden will live again and be what it is, a little farm on the edge of an enchanted forest.
 The ducks are camera shy and ran for their pen when they saw me coming with the dreaded camera. Maybe it is just Basil the goose who hates cameras. He protects the rest of the flock. |  The garden in winter. I use raised beds because my soil is toxic from the ASARCO smelter in Tacoma. These will be choked with color in July. |
Acknowledgement: tony@redwoodlandscaptingand builders.com
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