Garden designers at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle mounted elaborate displays using containers and planters to artfully landscape small urban spaces. There were many ideas that would work well in L.A., where more Angelenos are living in condominiums and apartment. Eden Landscape Designs display garden showed how stonework and containers can create visual interest in limited space. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
Part of any good garden show, whether its the famous Chelsea Flower Show in England or Seattles Northwest Flower & Garden Show, is pure fantasy. One display in Seattle celebrated stone in every conceivable way, including a massive Inuit Inukshuk that guarded the entry, and a towering rock-filled gabion wall. A low wall made of flagstones laid sideways like so many library books on a shelf was striking. The garden was the work of the firms Borrowed Ground and Exteriorscapes. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
Tall containers, seen in many of the displays, emphasized verticality to create visual interest beyond balconies, terraces and other small spaces. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
A live chicken in the little backyard barnyard built by Seattle Urban Farm Co. Its green patio cover was planted with corn and a chicken coop with a roof of strawberries. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
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Flowers decorate an old wood chair at one of the garden exhibits. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
Several of the most dramatic containers in a special exhibit of patio gardens were homemade by the designers. Here a fat, large steel pipe, with its sides peeled back like a partially eaten banana, is stuffed with fascinating little plants. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
A stone fountain at the display garden by Eden Landscape Design. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)
A garden intended for a rooftop used planters made of corrugated metal siding with the original weathered barn-red paint. (KEVIN P. CASEY / For The Times)