Results from the judging at the Northwest Flower &Garden Show — going on now through Sunday in Seattle — were released Wednesday, and Snohomish County garden professionals won big.
Jessi Bloom, 31, with N.W. EcoLogical Landscapes of Mill Creek, swept the show with her creative garden, “A Family’s Little Farm in the City.”
Bloom designed the display garden with help from Seattle Tilth and her 8-year-old son, Noah Kenney.
It won the American Horticultural Society Environment Award, the Pacific Horticultural Society Award, the Sunset Western Living Award, and the 425 Magazine Award, all in addition to a gold rating, the highest given at the show, plus the Ethel Moss People’s Choice Award.
Featured in the Jan. 28 edition of The Herald’s Home &Garden section, Bloom’s garden plays directly into the theme of the show, Beauty and Functionality.
It includes raised beds and containers for growing organic food, goats that nibble weeds and produce milk, chickens that aerate and enrich the soil with their mobile coop, and multiple water-saving elements, including a rain barrel, a cistern and a rain garden.
It also features solar panels, whimsical art, a tunnel for kids to crawl through, plus an elegant sitting area.
These are big-time awards given by a distinguished panel of horticultural professionals, led by Fergus Garrett, head gardener at Great Dixter, London; Roger Swain, author, gardener and former host of PBS’s “The Victory Garden”; and veteran San Francisco-based landscape architect, Andrea Cochran, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture.
Brent Bissell, owner of B. Bissell General Contractors of Snohomish, won the prestigious best-in-show award known as the Founder’s Cup for his work on “Ahead of the Curve,” a sophisticated, dramatic garden designed by Karen Stefonick of Le Jardin Home &Garden Design of Seattle.
Bissell’s garden also received a gold rating, along with Pacific Stone Co. of Everett, which presented a stone-filled garden titled “Meditation From Within.”
Susan Browne Landscape Design of Everett, which took home a gold award for “A Garden of Complements,” a black-and-white display garden created with Pamela Richards Garden Design of Seattle.
Oriana Hammerstrom, a 1987 Everett High School graduate who co-owns Woodinville Florist with her husband, Matt, won first place in the People’s Choice floral competition with her creation, “Spheres of Influence.”
Out of 22 gardens judged, the panel gave seven gold ratings, six silvers, seven bronze and two crystals.
Sunnyside Nursery of Marysville won best use of recycled materials in the show’s container gardening competition.
This year’s show was the first under the new ownership of O’Loughlin Trade Shows of Portland, which bought the 21-year-old event in June 2009 from the show’s founder, Duane Kelly of Seattle.
See the full list of award winners at the 2010 Northwest Flower &Garden Show at tinyurl.com/nwfgs2010awards.
Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037, sjackson@heraldnet.com.
