Those who choose Monday or Tuesday to go to the 2014 Great Big Home + Garden Show will be able to sample food from area restaurants while exploring some of the gardens created by landscapers.
The Show, which opens Saturday at the I-X Center in Cleveland, organized the partnerships with restaurants to serve food and drink in the gardens between 4 and 8 p.m. those days creating a perfect dinner hour diversion.
So this years preview of the sights, scents and sounds of spring, adds the sense of taste to the mix for show goers.
The Weidner Groups Naples garden will transport visitors to that exotic Italian city as Clevelands La Dolce Vita from the Little Italy neighborhood, and Orlando Baking Co. serve up tastes of what they do best. Step through an entryway framed for privacy by evergreen trees to discover that this Olmsted Falls landscaper has created an outdoor living space with both a fireplace area and a cascading waterfalls one of many water features in the shows gardens.
Westlakes Ironwood Cafe will showcase its food in America-Backyard Barbecue, the garden designed for the show by Green Impressions of Sheffield Village.
Its sunken dining area, constructed from natural sandstone boulders, will include a fire pit and grilling area presided over by a built-in Green Egg Grill. The sounds of water from a custom water feature will enhance the experience.
A hand-carved stone water feature is the focal point of the garden designed by Sheffield Villages appropriately named Falling Waters, Water Features and Landscape Gardens. That garden also includes a custom bench fashioned from stone and wood. Visitors to this garden are sure to notice how the placement of stones creates interesting elevations with colors and textures from a variety of evergreens.
Landscape firms faced some unusual challenges in creating the gardens for this years Great Big Home + Garden Show. Creating the illusion of spring in bloom months in advance requires tricking plants to produce flowers at a time when their bulbs are still below the ground in their natural state.
Many of the shows landscapers had outsourced their spring bulbs for forcing to J J Greenhouse in Columbia Station. But all the bulbs were destroyed when the three-generation family-owned greenhouse business was ravaged by fire in early December.
That left landscapers with a relatively short time to find a different source. After days of sub-zero temperatures, they also struggled with frozen clumps of soil and mulch that had turned the usually pliable earth into ice.
The cold weather and its related school closings also impacted deadlines for the Lorain County Joint Vocational School students to complete their garden. Juniors and seniors in the landscape and greenhouse management program worked with masonry and carpentry trades students to construct an 18th century windmill primrose garden for their Holland entry in the show. The students normally work long days at the IX Center to prepare their garden, but when schools were closed they werent permitted to do that,
Lorain County JVS offers the two-year programs to students from Amherst, Avon, Avon Lake, Clearview, Columbia, Elyria, Firelands, Keystone, Midview, North Ridgeville, Oberlin, Sheffield-Sheffield Lake and Wellington school districts.
The show will also include presentations by celebrities such as Ahmed Hassan, a TV landscaping expert; Frank Fritz, co-star of History Channels American Pickers; and the Food Networks Cupcake Wars star Emily Ellyn with her retro recipe re-dos.
Northeast Ohio chef Stefanie Paganini and her professional colleagues will present two to three 45-minute cooking demonstrations per day, passing out food samples to those in the audience. Among some of the more interesting demonstrations will be one on the making of mozzarella cheese and another on how to grow and harvest spring flowers for salads, she said.
Sure to be among the most popular of show features is the 2,500-square-foot ranch-style idea home, built inside the IX Center by Mayfield Heights-based Perrino Builders and Interiors. Open spaces with 12-foot beamed ceilings make it ideal for entertaining, and one space is versatile for use as a den, living room or fourth bedroom.
A walk-through one-bedroom, one-bath vacation home takes the cabin concept to whole new level with an affordable timber frame and a loft for additional sleeping or living space. A dream basement, designed with sports fans in mind, will resonate with those recovering from Sundays Super Bowl. Its home theater with leather power reclining seats, game room and bar will be a magnet for those who live to entertain.
A Home Depot Kids Workshop will be a draw for young ones. Each will leave with something he or she has built and will also take home an orange workshop apron.
For many, the Home + Garden Show is a place to walk among exhibits to see the latest trends, learn about options, cultivate ideas for their own projects and get advice from hundreds of experts in dozens of home and garden areas. For others, its closing-night sale of products and plant materials is a great place to snap up bargains for their own home landscapes.
It begins at 6 p.m. when the show closes on Feb. 16. Those who come should be prepared to get dirty and to haul away their finds.
2014 Great Big Home + Garden Show
Saturday through Feb.16
IX Center, Cleveland
Tickets: $14 adult at box office; $11 at www.greatbighomeandgarden.com, Discount Drug Mart and AAA locations; $10 seniors Monday through Thursday; $5 Children 6 through 12; free 5 and younger.
A dozen international gardens representing exotic locations around the world have partnered with local restaurants to offer food tastings in the gardens between 4 and 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. The latest show information will be posted on www.greatbighomeandgarden.com, the Home and Garden Events Facebook page and @GreatBigShow on Twitter.
See also: Lorain County JVS students honor Holland at Great Big Home + Garden Show.
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