Garden Show Construction
27 Feb, 2007 By: Jamie J. Gooch LDB SolutionsBilled as the largest show of its kind in North America, this month’s National City Home and Garden Show in Cleveland featured more than 150,000 sq. ft. of gardens, much of which was built by 17 local landscape design-build companies.
 Kolton had hoped to let people walk across the drawbridge, but ran out of time during his first year constructing a garden at the show. |
One of those companies, B. Kolton Landscape Design & Build, Inc., Cuyahoga Falls, OH, had never exhibited at the Home & Garden Show before. It was a challenging and rewarding experience for the company.
“We kind of fell into the project,” says Brennen Kolton, president. “Another company was supposed to do it, but got too busy so we were offered the opportunity. I’ve always wanted to do design a garden at the show, so we accepted.”
Starting late in the game meant Kolton had less time to design the garden his company would construct based around the show’s theme, “”The Beauty of Ireland.” Kolton’s company designed a sandstone castle, surrounded by a moat and plantings, as well as a dolmen (ancient stone slab monument common in Ireland) atop a hillside.
“We had maybe six weeks to get it designed,” he says. “We started constructing it in our company parking lot. We had it partially mapped out and constructed in the lot, but did the stonework construction at the show.”
Kolton had an eight-man crew and 48 hours to bring the garden together on the show floor, but even when building inside a convention center, the weather became a factor. Cleveland’s unusually mild winter finally decided to blanket the area with near-record snowfalls during the project.
“We all plow snow as well, and we were kind of gambling that it wouldn’t snow,” Kolton says. “When all that snow came down, that limited our manpower. We had four days, but needed five.”
If he had it to do all over again, Kolton says he would have spent more time planning the garden, including fully constructing it off-site first. He says he’d also order larger plant materials to keep up with the height and fullness of the plants in the surrounding gardens. Still, he hopes to take what he learned and apply it to next year’s garden.
“It was very successful for us,” Kolton says. “We got quite a few appointments and sold all the pieces we had there and most of the plants.” Kolton's company also received some added publicity from the show when he was also interviewed for an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
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