2026 Display Gardens
Celebrate Creativity & the Spring Parade
Each year, visionary Garden Creators from across the Pacific Northwest transform the show floor into a breathtaking celebration of nature and design. In just 72 hours, they craft spectacular garden displays using over 30,000 blooming flowers and forced plants, turning imagination into living art.
These temporary masterpieces are the heart of the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, a globally recognized showcase of garden innovation and inspiration.
This year’s lineup features the best of the best—designers pushing boundaries with vibrant color palettes, diverse plant selections, and interactive elements that invite you to explore and engage. Themes range from peaceful retreats and romantic escapes to game night whimsy, burnt wood artistry, edible botanicals, and of course, the essence of PNW nature and lifestyle.
Wander through the gardens on the main show floor to spark ideas for your own outdoor oasis—and don’t forget to snap a few selfies with these stunning backdrops!
Adam Gorski Landscapes "The Active Family Garden"
Designed for today’s active urban or suburban family, Adam Gorski Landscape’s garden blends usable, sports-oriented spaces with colorful, resilient plants. The landscape features durable groundcovers and perennials that withstand activity and require minimal upkeep, ensuring long-lasting aesthetic appeal. Space for equipment like a golf green, sauna, hot tub, or workout area is seamlessly integrated, creating dynamic zones for recreation and relaxation. With more than ten gardens presented at the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival over the years, Adam Gorski’s expertise shines in this energetic, low-maintenance design. Every element is curated for families seeking adaptable, beautiful outdoor living where play meets practicality.
Take-home ideas: Integrating durable plants and dynamic spaces allows you to enjoy low-maintenance outdoor living that suits your active lifestyle year-round.
BL Landscapes "Rust and Refinement"
BL Landscapes’ “Rust and Refinement” is a study in balance, where rugged textures meet clean lines, elevating the timeless beauty of Northwest plants. Built on strong contrasts between raw and refined, the garden highlights weathered steel in its visual language, celebrated for its warmth and durability in modern landscape design. Arbors, planters, and columns pair with circular forms and a stacked-stone water feature to create an artistic and grounded space. Welcoming to anyone seeking a functional, beautiful outdoor retreat, the garden demonstrates craftsmanship, transforming everyday pathways and plantings into enduring moments. “Rust and Refinement” invites visitors to imagine outdoor living where utility and artistry coexist with ease.
Take-home ideas: Durable yet beautiful plantings and visually striking materials like weathered steel, unique lighting, and art add structure, warmth, and year-round functionality to your garden.
Devonshire Landscapes "Between Light and Water"
Dip into tranquility in “Between Light and Water,” a garden designed to feel like the serene, shimmering space just beneath the water’s surface. A thoughtful balance of calmness and movement, this display evokes peace through cool tones and lush plants while dynamic light and shadow work guide your path. Glass artwork mingles with ceramic and metal vessels alongside a small water feature, inviting reflection and relaxation. 2024 Silver winner of “Best in The PNW” for Landscaping, Devonshire Landscapes enhances cozy personal garden spaces with local landscape designs that protect the natural environment —perfect for renters and homeowners seeking portable, personal retreats.
Take-home ideas: Creating serene, impactful garden sanctuaries in small spaces through thoughtful use of containers, lighting, and water features.
Elandan Gardens "Pathways and Portals Cast from Nature"
"Pathways and Portals Cast from Nature" invites visitors into a sanctuary of peace and tranquility, where hand-crafted sculpture meets meticulously trained specimen trees. Artfully constructed stone walls guide visitors past extraordinary bonsais and perfectly pruned plants, each a testament to the craftsmanship of longtime Northwest Flower & Garden Festival participants Will Robinson and Josh Barwick of Elandan Gardens and Noble Stone Construction. The garden celebrates the artistry of bonsai mastery, offering visitors a profound sense of appreciation for what emerges when patience and artistry converge in purposeful harmony.
Take-home ideas: Utilize natural materials in unconventional ways and strategic pruning to create beauty in everyday plants.
Elisabeth Miller Botanical Garden – Great Plant Picks "Waterwise Wonders"
Elisabeth Miller Botanical Garden’s signature Great Plant Picks (GPP) program is the Northwest’s go-to guide for expert-selected plants, chosen by top horticulturists from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Celebrating their 25th year participating in the festival, their garden spotlights drought-tolerant picks for both sun and shade, a priority as the region faces hotter, drier summers. The garden showcases perennials, shrubs, and trees in attractive containers, highlighting easy-care choices. Signage throughout their display directs visitors to the GPP website for in-depth details on growth, care, and outstanding qualities. Each selection and display reinforces the garden’s mission to advance Pacific Northwest horticulture by discovering, curating, and sharing plants that thrive in maritime landscapes, including exciting new and unusual varieties.
Take-home ideas: Choose drought-tolerant plants for resilient Northwest gardens that thrive in both sun and shade.
Emerald City Orchids "Moonlit Garden of the Mountain Goddess"
Emerald City Orchids conjures a mythical alpine world glimpsed only by moonlight. A river of clouds winds down from the highest peaks, flowing as a ghostly mist across dark river stone and into a landscape alive with exotic blooming orchids and tropical foliage. These diverse plants, seldom seen in American cultivation, reflect the surging interest in exotic species among today’s urban plant enthusiasts. Designed as a realm fit for deities yet deeply instructive for modern growers, the garden reveals how orchids can thrive in pots, on wood mounts, or suspended in airy displays. Visitors are invited into an otherworldly sanctuary where rarity, artistry, and horticultural technique meet.
Take-home ideas: Rare and unusual orchids can thrive in everyday homes—experiment with mounted, suspended, and other unique displays to bring a touch of the extraordinary into your space.
Fancy Plants Gardens and Susan Browne Landscape Design "Choose Your Path"
Which path calls to you? Experience how a core selection of plants, hardscapes, and artwork suitable to the Northwest climate can transform into distinctly different design styles tailored to any space. Wander through a Japanese garden framed by winding wooden walls, delight in a Cottage garden dressed in warm pastels, and relax in a PNW-inspired retreat for leisurely living. Gardens can be viewed together or individually. Puget Sound legacies, Fancy Plants Gardens Inc. and Susan Browne Landscape Design, each bring 25 years of landscape expertise and garden design to the festival, inspiring visitors for well over a decade.
Take-home ideas: Adapt a core preference of Northwest-friendly plants, hardscapes, and artwork to create a multitude of styles that reflect your personal vision and space.
Flower Growers of Puget Sound "Bloom Local"
"Bloom Local" celebrates Seattle's vibrant horticulture community, collaborating with local nurseries, gardeners, businesses, and residents to cultivate beauty, resilience, and a shared love for growing close to home. Greeting visitors with a fragrant display of Pacific Northwest flowers and striking "Fire Coral" sculptures by local artist Bent Productions, the garden captivates with its spirited celebration of all things Seattle. Brought to life by Quinn Ridgway and the Washington Association of Landscape Professionals, "Bloom Local" invites you to connect with the passionate community behind this project and experience the natural splendor of the Pacific Northwest.
Take-home ideas: Working with local horticulturalists and craftspeople who understand the flora and fauna of the region.
GardenGirls LLC "The Inward Facing Garden"
The “Inward Facing Garden” invites visitors to pause, breathe, and reconnect. Designed by award-winning Snohomish garden designer Denise Ashley of GardenGirls, LLC, this meditative haven blends modern style with timeless tranquility. Curved bamboo tunnels rise like living architecture, creating sound barriers and a sense of gentle enclosure. At the center, a glowing orb symbolizes the spark of creativity. A spiral-patterned paver labyrinth leads visitors toward that light, reflecting the creative journey. The garden highlights the growing trend of mindful outdoor living—how thoughtfully designed spaces can restore mental and physical well-being. Ideal for those interested in meditation gardens, reflective spaces, and country estate landscapes, it demonstrates how creativity and sustainability intersect to bring peace, purpose, and environmental awareness into everyday life.
Take-home ideas: Create a mindful retreat through natural sound barriers, sustainable materials, and thoughtful lighting.
Hello Garden and GMC Landscapes "The Gardenmaker's Atelier"
In “The Gardenmaker’s Atelier,” Hello Garden transforms a BC Greenhouse into a botanical couture studio, an imaginative workspace where plants become wearable art, and the garden unfolds like a runway of color and texture. Soft, billowing flowers and cottage-inspired plantings evoke today’s most sought-after gardens, while a trickling waterfall adds movement and serenity. Inside the greenhouse, botanical creations by Françoise Weeks highlight the idea that gardens aren’t just grown—they’re played with, styled, and reinterpreted. Designed for anyone craving a place to escape into creative exploration, the display celebrates the emotional quality of a garden, inviting visitors to linger in the details and rediscover joy in the act of play.
Take-home ideas: Create a “creative shelf” in your own garden, a space to play and rethink containers with bold, textured combinations that move beyond traditional formulas.
HomeGrown Organics "Carex into the Fuchsia"
HomeGrown Organics’ garden playfully bridges two contrasting garden worlds, celebrating both restraint and exuberance. Outside, a meadow of sedges (Carex) highlights these often-overlooked plants—ecologically vital, resilient, and quietly beautiful—featuring native Pacific Northwest species alongside modern and exotic varieties. The garden’s focal point is the French Glass House, provided by Versailles Gardens in Portland, envisioned as a magical space for restoration and escape. Inside, the mood shifts to a lush, immersive display of cascading fuchsias set above ponds and water features alive with Japanese Rice Fish and aquatic plants. Designed by John Coghlan of HomeGrown Organics, the garden invites visitors to wander, pause, and experience the quiet drama of foliage meeting vibrant bloom.
Take-home ideas: Use sedges for structure and sustainability, explore small-scale water features, and reimagine glass houses as year-round garden retreats.
Lacewing Fine Gardening and Botanical Design "The Dye Garden"
“The Dye Garden” invites visitors to explore how natural spaces inspire artistic expression through Pacific Northwest dye plants, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between ecological gardens and botanical artistry. Dyed silk panels and strands by artist Rachel Grunig are woven throughout the space, integrating with natural arbors crafted from spring-blooming branches. Guests are encouraged to interact by weaving silk strands into the arbors, set against a backdrop of Quaking Aspen and Lodgepole Pines. A central pathway showcases dye plantings and natural stonework by master craftsman Nick Aitken, leading to a gathering space with a sitting boulder and corten water bowl sponsored by Rock Mountain, an inviting place for reflection and celebration of the Pacific Northwest.
Take-home ideas: Use natural materials, ancient building techniques, and plants as tools for creativity in home garden design.
Method Hardscapes "Cascadia Reverie"
Composed of natural stone sourced from Pacific Northwest volcanoes and glacier-fed lakes, Cascadia Reverie by Method Hardscapes captures the region’s rugged, timeless beauty. Visitors enter beneath a granite lintel into a landscape shaped by stone, water, and fire. Hexagonal basalt pavers set with New Zealand brass buttons lead to a handcrafted granite and basalt fire pit. A dramatic wall of North Cascades granite and Whistler basalt rises ahead, while overhead boulders spill water into clean-lined basalt pools below. Stewartia, crepe myrtles, bulbs, and native plants provide color and seasonal change. Designed with regenerative principles, every boulder and pool manages stormwater, filtering it through rock and root.
Take-home ideas: Channel the raw beauty of the Pacific Northwest into a regenerative, restorative space that both inspires and sustains.
Nature Perfect Landscape & Design "Gateway to Nature"
In “Gateway to Nature,” visitors step through a stone moon gate into a tranquil landscape designed to quiet the mind and soften the edges of everyday life. A series of stepping stones leads to a sculptural, pondless waterfall—an elegant focal point that blends movement, texture, and sound without the maintenance required by a traditional pond. This peaceful, grounding space reflects Nature Perfect’s decades of expertise with natural stone and water features, showcasing how simple structural elements can transform a garden into a restorative retreat. Intended for anyone seeking a moment of calm, the display invites guests to slow their pace, follow the path, and reconnect with nature’s ease.
Take-home ideas: Use pathways to guide flow and create a sense of journey. Consider pondless water features for soothing sound and beauty with minimal upkeep.
Puyallup Tribe of Indians "The Knowledge of Place & Time"
Transcend time and generations in the Puyallup Tribe of Indians’ immersive sanctuary, where the stories of seven distinct periods are told through the living language of ethnobotany. Embark on a journey from the Medicine Creek Treaty of the 1880s to the modern-day Renaissance of Pacific Northwest enterprises, weaving through a garden of historical artifacts and native plants resilient to cultural transformations. Beyond its visual beauty, listen as the plantings and symbols tell tales of wisdom only time can cultivate. As the festival’s presenting sponsor, The Puyallup Tribe of Indians extends knowledge of traditions and systems of caring for people and the environment. The Tribe’s presence sets the tone for a celebration of connection, resilience, and respect for the natural world.
Take-home ideas: Incorporate native plants with purpose, learn the cultural stories behind landscapes, and design gardens that educate as much as they inspire.
Redwood Builders Landscaping "More Smiles Per Hour"
Take a slow coastal cruise through “More Smiles per Hour,” where a vintage convertible Volkswagen Beetle sets the tone of this carefree and timeless creation. With 18 years of experience at the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, Redwood Builders has crafted a retreat that feels refreshingly unmanicured and effortlessly natural. Framed by aged driftwood, a cozy fire pit, a corten sculpture, and a calming water feature, this coastal-inspired garden invites visitors to breathe deeply and linger. Pacific Northwest hardy plants and sculptural tropical bonsai create a lush oasis that celebrates balance, warmth, and the art of slowing down. Here, happiness isn't measured in miles per hour, but in smiles per hour.
Take-home ideas: Use natural shaping and design to create a less-manicured, more relaxed garden design.
Relish Gardens "The Jewel Box: A Moment Preserved"
“The Jewel Box: A Moment Preserved” captures the fleeting beauty and seasonality of the garden, reflecting both the preservation of the previous year’s bounty and the anticipation of the season ahead. Relish Gardens pairs sculptural pruning and layered planting to create rhythm and movement, weaving together edible and ornamental elements. The design layers texture, color, and form in small vignettes that reveal themselves gradually, like a jewel box. Salvaged and repurposed materials act as sculptural anchors, contrasting the softness of living foliage. A table setting invites visitors to imagine living and dining in the garden. Designed as an extension of a suburban or metropolitan home, the garden is a nod to the growing movement toward regenerative gardening and homesteading on a smaller scale.
Take-home ideas: Blend edible and ornamental plants to make your garden both seasonal and personal.
Washington State Nursery & Landscape Association "Floriferous Awakening"
“Floriferous Awakening” captures the quiet exhilaration of early spring in the Pacific Northwest, focusing on that fleeting moment when landscapes shift from stillness to possibility. Inspired by real Seattle-area gardens, the display pairs three circular raised beds with naturalistic, pollinator-friendly plantings that highlight texture, movement, and the first washes of seasonal color. Layered trees, shrubs, perennials, and groundcovers evoke the familiar beauty of urban and suburban gardens just beginning to stir after winter. Designed to be aspirational yet attainable, the garden invites visitors to appreciate the anticipation, texture, and emotion of renewal that defines spring in the region, highlighting the everyday magic of real gardens.
Take-home ideas: Embrace early-season texture, layer plants for year-round interest, and choose pollinator-friendly varieties that thrive in Northwest gardens.
West Seattle Nursery "Where Stories Take Root"
Designed as a small woodland bookshop nestled among trees, ferns, and shade-loving shrubs, “Where Stories Take Root” centers on a cozy reading retreat that blurs the line between structure and landscape. A deck extends over a gently moving pond, where wooden bowls drift and softly knock together, creating a subtle, rhythmic soundtrack. The path wraps around an intimate, sunken seating circle that invites visitors to gather, linger, and read. Whimsical details, like a chandelier crafted from books and sculptural panels that fan pages into floral forms, add layers of storytelling throughout the space. Created by West Seattle Nursery, the garden celebrates the growing desire for personal outdoor sanctuaries, no matter the size.
Take-home ideas: Design cozy garden “rooms,” layer plants for immersive greenery, and add sensory elements like sound and texture to enrich small spaces.
Wittman Estes "Living Lightly"
Take a mindful stroll through “Living Lightly,” where garden creators Wittman Estes demonstrates how thoughtful design can honor rather than overpower the land. The sloped, rocky landscape celebrates the Pacific Northwest's wild beauty with drought-tolerant natives like Huckleberry, Kinnikinnick, and Beach Strawberry. A hovering grated walkway floats above the terrain, revealing the textures of the earth beneath, and guiding visitors to a stone terrace and simple viewing platform. Here, the quiet elegance of dry-scape gardens shows that beauty doesn't require lushness, only respect for what nature has already composed.
Take-home ideas: How to create engaging dry-scape designs that celebrate the existing terrain and native plants.
Zenji Landscape Construction "Essentially Elegant: The Cascade"
Step away from the busy city and into "Essentially Elegant: The Cascade," where Zenji Landscape Construction invites you to find your sanctuary. A natural stone patio becomes your retreat, surrounded by lush native gardens accented with seasonal color. A functional dry creek routes rainwater naturally, while enhancing the landscape's flow. Settle onto the bench and let the peaceful symphony of water cascading over Grizzly Flats and Vail Granite wash over you, culminating in a drilled Montana Golden stone at the crest. Here, low-maintenance hardscapes and healing waters prove that Leonardo da Vinci was right: “water truly is the driving force of all nature,” essential for rejuvenating not just the garden, but the heart and soul.
Take-home ideas: The use of low-maintenance hardscapes for more enjoyment and less yard work.