The Northwest Flower &Garden Show is in limbo no longer.
The 21-year-old Seattle trade show, once thought dead for a lack of a buyer, has been sold to O’Loughlin Trade Shows of Portland, Ore.
Show owner Duane Kelly announced the sale Tuesday after months of uncertainty in the landscape industry and among local gardeners.
O’Loughlin, a fourth-generation family-owned company, puts on 12 trade shows in Washington and Oregon, including the Portland Home &Garden Show and the Tacoma Home &Garden Show, plus RV, boat and sportsman’s shows in both states.
Kelly, 59, said he chose O’Loughlin because of the company’s decades of experience, financial stability and commitment to the show’s traditions, including elaborate display gardens, 300 retail vendors and more than 100 educational seminars.
“I feel really good about it,” Kelly said. “The more I’ve talked with them, the more I’ve appreciated how they are committed to quality.”
O’Loughlin staff have attended the Seattle show as well as the only larger garden show in the country, the Philadelphia Flower Show, to glean ideas in recent years.
“They really get what these shows are and that they’re different from home shows and home and garden shows,” Kelly said. “They really appreciate that distinction.”
Kelly long ago booked space at the Washington State Convention &Trade Center, where the next show will run from Feb. 3 to 7.
Sandy Schumacher of Camano Island wouldn’t miss it for the world.
“I am ecstatic,” said Schumacher, board vice president for the Evergreen Arboretum &Gardens in Everett. “This show is an important gardening and tourism component for the entire Northwest. I will not take this show for granted again.”
O’Loughlin president Bill O’Loughlin, 48, said he plans to retain the style of the event by hiring the show’s exhibits manager, Linda Knudsen, and garden and feature manager, Cyle Eldred, who is charged with recruiting and supporting about 25 display garden creators.
“We have no intention of taking it in new direction,” O’Loughlin said. “My goal would be, in about 10 years, to invite Duane back and have him look at the event and go, ‘Wow, this was a great move and I’m really proud of what they’ve done.’”
Eldred, who will work out of O’Loughlin’s Tacoma offices, said he hopes to have commitments from garden creators by the end of July.
He said O’Loughlin’s staff are excited not just about maintaining a high-quality garden show but also improving the company’s other events.
“I’m real impressed,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of ambition.”
Part of that ambition includes a serious financial commitment to what Kelly has dubbed the “stars of the show,” the display garden creators.
Each typically receives between $3,000 and $5,000, about $100,000 total, plus free dramatic lighting, water, electricity and heavy equipment.
Judith Jones, who runs Fancy Fronds Nursery in Gold Bar, called the news of the sale “refreshing,” and added that it wouldn’t be possible for her to create theatrical garden displays without that cash infusion.
O’Loughlin said such funding will continue.
Kelly put his Seattle company, Salmon Bay Events, which also runs the San Francisco Flower &Garden Show, up for sale in October 2008.
In February, when a sale wasn’t forthcoming, he said both the company’s shows would wither and die if buyers did not come forward.
The sale of the San Francisco Flower &Garden Show closed in May with San Francisco Garden Show LLC, a group that formed to purchase the event.
Kelly did not disclose the sale price of either show, except to say that he received a combined total of less than $1 million.
Kelly, who said he is looking for a day job in addition to his work as a playwright, said he’s confident in O’Loughlin’s vision for a top-notch annual event.
“The proof will be in the pudding, of course: the quality of the event next February,” he said.
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