One of the most popular activites of the the Leesburg Flower Garden Festival is marveling at the creative genius of the various landscapers, who have built garden designs to show customers just what they could achieve, with the right ideas, materials and focus.
It takes a huge amount of planning and work—and expense—throughout the year to come up with the perfect design, a fact that’s often lost on vistors as they survey the finished products.
Last year, people marveled over Jason Dengler’s “take-you-back-to-the-farm” charming chicken house, complete with live chickens, surrounded by a tiny garden. Dengler and his Wildwood Landscape team won Best Overall Presentation, with the judges and public alike agreeing the chickens stole the show.
Dengler, for whom this will be the seventh year of the landscape contest, has placed in the top three each year. He’s won four times and also the People’s Choice award several times.
Last year’s award for Outstanding Technical Craftsmanship went to West Winds Nursery, from Sudley Springs. The Outstanding Creativity Award went to River’s Edge Landscape, of Bluemont, for its sophisticated and elegant display. The company also won the People’s Choice award, in which the public decides to whom it will award the palm.
For many, the landscape design exhibit is the focal point of the festival and a source of visual pleasure as well as a mine of information, ideas and practical advice on how to design a garden, how to intersperse different plans, shrubs and trees and how to blend them in a harmonious whole with water and hardscape features, such as fountains, pools, trellises, gazebos and stone walls.
For the landscaping team, the effort and expense pays off in the exposure to some 40,000 people and resulting orders down the road.
An added side attraction—at least for downtown residents of Leesburg, is watching the gardens slowly emerge from bare pavement.
“It’s the best free show on earth,” according to one resident, who in previous years watched the evolving sight.
When the landscapers first move in at 6 p.m. Friday night, the intersection of King and Market streets is filled with fork lifts, dump trucks, piles of dirt, sand, mulch, stone and brick, various trees and shrubs and hoses snaking across the tarmac.
But then, slowly, order begins to emerge. First, the outlines of the garden appear—a dry stone wall rises from the pavement, a huge boulder is levered onto a corner of the garden, or a gazebo is lowered carefully onto the small plot, and a large tree positioned near it with its branches drooping over. Maybe a fountain is placed in the center of the plot. High walls, maybe ivy or wisteria covered, suddenly emerge, and slowly the garden takes shape. A wrought-iron or wooden bench appears—destined to be sunk down onto gratefully the following days by weary festival goers.
Finally, the plant materials are set in place—colorful bulbs peeping out from shrubs and trees—and covered with a pungent smelling blanket of mulch. A last water, and the weary team members wrap it up and call it a day—a long day, that in many cases last well into the night.
The next day, landscapers are on duty at their exhibits, patiently answering the questions by the public, who get a great free horticultural design education.
Doug Fulcher has taken over management of the design competition this year. Awards will be given for Best Overall Presentation; Outstanding Technical Craftsmanship; and Outstanding Creativity.
The cash award of $750 for Best Overall Presentation is given to the landscaper whose garden has scored the highest number of criteria points as determined by the judges’ site visits and discussions.
The Outstanding Technical Craftsmanship award of $500 goes to the exhibitor whose garden shows the finest quality of materials and workmanship as defined by the criteria.
The Outstanding Creativity award, also worth $500, is given to the landscaper whose garden exhibits the most originality and features elements that are unique, provide human interest or humor, and/or convey an identifiable mood or theme as defined by the criteria. Entrants may only win one of the three landscape awards.
Judging happens Saturday morning and the results are posted at the main entertainment stage in the early afternoon. The popular People’s Choice, in which the public gets to agree, or more frequently, disagree, with the judges’ verdict, is posted on Sunday morning.
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