February isn’t normally garden-planting season.
But at the John S. Knight Center, this week was an exception.
Crews were bustling around the downtown event center earlier this week, installing indoor gardens in time for Friday’s opening of the Akron Home & Flower Show. Two gardens and an outdoor bar will be featured in the show, and additional landscaping will enhance a village of tiny houses and outdoor buildings.
Building gardens in a convention center takes a little sleight of hand. Doing it in just a few days takes a leap of faith.
Not only do landscapers have to contend with challenges like planting atop concrete, but they also have to hope their plants will all miraculously burst into bloom in time for the show — plants that normally flower at all different times, and none of which blooms naturally anywhere close to late February.
Thanks to some greenhouse magic worked by students at Auburn Career Center in Concord Township, budding crabapple trees and blooming azalea shrubs waited to be installed at the Knight Center, much to the relief of Jacob Grimm of Brothers Grimm Landscape & Design Co. in New Franklin.
Grimm’s company was constructing a Tuscan-inspired backyard oasis, which at this point was pretty much just a stage built from aluminum I-beams and plywood. Building a raised base for the garden was necessary so the crew could install a water wall that would spill into urns floating in a small swimming pool, he explained.
By the time the show opens, Grimm promised, the garden will also have an 11-foot table in the shade of a pergola and a round brick and stone fireplace. “That’s part of it right there,” he said, pointing to a shrink-wrapped half cylinder perched atop a flatbed trailer.
Just steps away, workers from Morel Landscaping in North Royalton were unloading rocks from the bucket of a skid-steer loader and positioning them along what would eventually become raised landscaping beds. Others laid pavers atop a cushioned base that had been laid out on the concrete floor.
A fire pit had already been installed, and a bubbling rock water feature would come later.
Building a garden in such a compressed time frame isn’t easy, owner Rob Morel said.
“We’re at a homeowner’s place three weeks,” he said. At the Knight Center, the installers have just days.
Still, Morel welcomed the chance to show off what his company can do. He was especially eager to let visitors try a virtual reality headset that would mimic the experience of standing in a garden, a tool Morel’s company can use to help customers envision makeovers of their own landscapes.
Besides the gardens, the show will offer vendor displays, speakers, demonstrations and a live animal show. On Saturday, costumed Star Wars characters will be available for photos with visitors from 1 to 4 p.m.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MBBreckABJ, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.