Every year, in the last weekend of March, Spring arrives just a little bit early at the Capital District Garden and Flower show in Troy, NY at Hudson Valley Community College. There you will find full scale Gardens, floral exhibits, lectures, workshops, and garden themed retail exhibits.
The show always has a theme. The theme in 2019 was “Vintage”. This was the first year that Hartland Designs was an exhibiter at the garden show. Rebekah from Hartland Designs teamed up with her brother Kyle of Lamphere Stoneworks and created “Enchanted Forest”. This involved constructing a Full scale 7 ½’ tall key stone arch gateway into a moon garden. The intention was to have everything inside the garden, the patio, the plants, and the furniture be something that could be enjoyed by the light of the moon. The moon patio was made from 2 large pieces of sliced sandstone, the plants were all mostly white or yellow flowering, with just a few purple accents. Paper birch trees ringed the garden. Vintage white furniture offered a place for folks to sit and rest. A path led to a glacier carved limestone fountain, and a white granite, natural stone bench.
At the show, some of these beautiful garden exhibits can only be viewed from the aisles. Rebekah feels very strongly that gardens should be experienced by all the senses, not just sight. Enchanted Forest allowed visitors to move through and experience the garden up close and personally. They could smell the fragrant daffodils and hyacinth, hear the trickling water feature, feel the stone under their feet or when they sat to rest.
2020’s theme is “Wanderlust”. Hartland Designs will team up again with Lamphere Stoneworks to create “An Irish Spring” complete with a dazzling water feature, standing stones, stone walls and benches, an Irish pasture, and a fairy mound.
