MOVING PLANTS IS A LOT

This weekend I helped build the front and side display for the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association Expo (TNLA). It was very informative. Though I haven’t taken any landscaping classes, I’ve aware that most commercial and residential gardens look the way they do because the design was planned out in advance. What I wasn’t aware of was that the same holds true for small displays of plants.

As soon as we arrived at the expo floor and changed into our volunteer shirts, DGB(our advisor) handed us a very intricately drawn plan of the front display, complete with a key for each plant we were to insert. To be honest, I was blown away. I thought we were going to be eye-balling the whole thing, the front display wasn’t that big after all. But I soon learned that no matter how small a display was, having a design to work off is actually very helpful. Especially since we spent most of our time building the foundation the plants would sit upon. When we finally began to move plants four sweaty hours into what was soon to become an all day affair, I was pretty relieved I didn’t have to exhaust my mind thinking of what plants should go where, and how it would play into the overall design. We eventually did run out of plants and had to resort to random leftovers, of which my professor told me to “place them anywhere and just make sure it looks good.” Believe it or not that is harder to do than it looks. Aiming for general symmetry while avoiding a mirror image is challenging when the placement of one croton plant can make an entire display look lopsided. I walked onto the expo floor expecting to move a few plants and walked away with a newfound respect for landscape design.