Flower Power! Chicago Flower and Garden Show

Last Saturday was the beginning of the 9 day Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier. My husband and I went to check it out this past Sunday.  I was absolutely stunned at all of the beautiful flowers! I love flowers. I love them all so much that I can't say that I have a favorite one. Here are some pictures that I took of the place. 

This is the at the entrance. The featured artists here are Emmy Star Brown and Jeffery Breslow. 

The Art of Floral was one of my favorite exhibits. At this exhibit artists took a picture or a classic piece of art and using it as inspiration they made these floral arrangements.

Around the corner was an exhibit called Footwear: Women's Stories, another good one.  All of the items in this collection were of shoes and were made by the Women's Journeys in Fiber. At each shoe was the artist's reasoning behind their piece of work. This one below was made of autumn leaves. 

Then we stumbled across over 50 varieties of tulips in this exhibit called Canvas of Tulips. They smelled so sweet and were absolutely beautiful. According to the program, this exhibit was made up of more than 7000 tulips and were hand planted!! Amazing!

The next few pictures are from vendors, mainly from Marinaro's. They had these gorgeous centerpieces and floral arrangements and sold the most beautiful roses!! I bought a dozen yellow roses from them. 

I die! Look at these colors!

I purchased a batch of these hydrangeas, except mine were blue. The worker told me to water these every other day and to flip the plant around after watering to drain any excess water. Also, it would be a good idea to repot the plant after the flowers have fallen out and only the foliage is left. When repotting, you'd only want to put the flowers in a pot that is about an inch larger than the one it is in now - this prevents the plant from going into shock and dying. A few more pics from the vendors below.

        

A real buttercream cake!

Blue, pink and mustard colored roses

Here is another exhibit called Tablescapes: An Art-Full Table. The tables on display were designed by Chicago's top florists, retailers, designers, and clubs. They were so beautiful, maybe not the most functional table, but its art!

There were other garden exhibits which I didn't mention. There were ones where you could feed koi, others where you can hold insects like a tarantula or cockroach [no pics of these, couldn't get near them for fear I may actually die]. Great place to bring kids. But I have to say, next year I am going to sit in on the talks and demos that they offered. We were only able to sit in the tail end of one talk given by a gardener from the Peterson Garden Project. She discussed how to grow corn in a mound of soil with companion veggies such as squash and beans. I hope one day I'll be able to have a garden of my own!