Garden Show

Joey Green, the "mad scientist of clean," and Jeff "Mole Hunter" Holper aren't the only "live" attractions at the Maryland Home and Garden Show. Here are a few others: •Among the must-sees at the show are 19 fully landscaped gardens, including one designed by European Landscapes, winner of Best-in-Show last year. Boordy Vineyards and Linganore Wine Cellars are offering free wine tastings to add to your enjoyment of the gardens. •The Maryland Spring Craft Show features more than 250 artists, including Chester Shuey's handcrafted wood furniture and Charles Adams' metal garden art. Adams' stone and metal birds are featured at the Philadelphia International Flower Show.

When: 10 a.m-6 p.m. Friday and Sunday, Oct. 19 and 21, and until 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20. Where: Maryland State Fairgrounds, 2200 York Road, Timonium. Tickets: $9 for adults, $7 for seniors 62 and up, and $3 for children ages 6 to 12. Kids 5 and under are free. Find $2-off coupons at Pizza Hut and M&T bank locations or at marylandhomeandgarden.com/fall. What's new: Purple Backyard Paradise: a 40-by-60-foot football-themed, landscaped backyard with a patio shaped like the NFL's Vince Lombardi trophy, complete with fire pit, outdoor kitchen and big-screen TV. Returning favorites: Tim Nyberg and Jim Berg return as the Duct Tape Guys, a comedy duo and authors of seven books about the sticky stuff.

The Fall Maryland Home & Garden Show is scheduled Oct. 17 to 19 at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. The event will have more than 300 exhibitors and include landscaping and home improvement ideas. The schedule is from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17; from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18; and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19. Tickets are $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and $2 for children between 6 and 12. Admission for children younger than 6 is free. For more information, call 410-863-1180 or log on to www.mdhomeandgarden.

When Sandy Finley needed gifts for colleagues recently, a store-bought picture frame simply wouldn't do. Instead, she whipped up a little something in pink and black, using a product originally made to keep ammunition cases dry during World War II. "I used patterned duct tape that went with their personalities," says the 45-year-old special-needs high school teacher. And when a ripped swivel stool cried out for a new life, the Harford County resident knew what to do: add turquoise with purple squares and white sunbursts.

Coming out of the snowiest Maryland winter on record, thousands of Marylanders got a jump-start on spring at the Maryland Home & Garden Show where tulips, daffodils and pansies were in full bloom. Last month's blizzard inspired McCarroll Nole of Baltimore to attend the annual show on Sunday for the first time. "We are tired of the white stuff. We want to see some green. We want to see something come out of the ground," said Nole, who brought a camera with him to record ideas for sprucing up his flower garden.

There is nothing like a home and garden show to make you want to start from scratch on your own home and garden, and the 27th Maryland Home & Garden Show this weekend at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium is no exception. "I wish I'd thought of that." "Honey, we should think about doing that." And "Can I have your card?" will be the catchphrases at the Cow Palace until the show closes at 6 tomorrow night and we are all left with only our daydreams. There are more than 500 exhibitors in more than 160,000 square feet, and that's a lot of ground to cover.

Organizers of the third annual Caritas Flower and Garden Show at St. John's College in Annapolis took a lesson from last year's "blizzard of the century."Figuring that it will take 99 years, plus or minus, for the conditions to take their presentation hostage again, they have expanded this year's show to two days: Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.The show will be in the Francis Scott Key Lobby and adjacent areas, including indoor rooms and a heated pavilion featuring free-form ponds, displays and crafts.

Call it a gardener's paradise. The Maryland Home and Garden Show, which runs Friday through March 2 and March 7-9 at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, boasts more than 600 exhibitors offering gardening and home products, ideas and tips. A "Feature Garden" will be set up across 2,500 square feet, designed by last year's "Best of Show" landscaper, Kingsdene Nurseries, with Colonial Maryland themes and native Maryland plants. Experts from the world of gardening, including renowned landscape architect Wolfgang Oehme and horticultural pro Kurt Bluemel, will present talks, and there'll be competitions by the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland and the Maryland Orchid Society.

Step into spring and explore "The Magic of Gardening" at the sixth annual Maymont Flower and Garden Show at the Richmond Convention Centre from Thursday through Feb. 26.The Maymont show attracts visitors from all over Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region. It also attracts well-known gardening specialists, such as Jim Wilson, co-host of the PBS series "Victory Garden," and many others as guest lecturers.In addition to landscape exhibits, vendor booths and lectures, there will be a series of workshops in the adjoining Richmond Marriott Hotel.

THE COMMUNITY spirit in Taneytown is contagious these days. It seems that not too many weekends go by without the city or one of its community groups sponsoring a festival, cleanup or other function or celebration.Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, the town's economic council will sponsor the Home and Garden Show. Begun last year as the Plant and Flower Mart with 12 vendors, the event's purpose is for people to visit Taneytown, leave their cares behind and enjoy a day at the park -- and in the process learn what a good place Taneytown is, according to Pam Harlow and Melissa Harris, co-chairs of the event.

Harbinger of spring, the Maryland Home and Garden Show has once again taken over the Timonium Fairgrounds. A highlight of the show, for me, is always the group of live display gardens featuring flowering bulbs, perennials, and shrubs, stone patios and walkways, outdoor kitchens, pergolas, arbors, and water features. Each year, I visit the show in advance of the opening to evaluate the gardens and to present a special Chesapeake Home + Living Landscape Award. Since the magazine has been presenting this award for 10 years, I know most of the landscapers who are competing, so I recuse myself from judging, and instead hit up a couple of local experts to pick our winner.

Coming out of the snowiest Maryland winter on record, thousands of Marylanders got a jump-start on spring at the Maryland Home & Garden Show where tulips, daffodils and pansies were in full bloom. Last month's blizzard inspired McCarroll Nole of Baltimore to attend the annual show on Sunday for the first time. "We are tired of the white stuff. We want to see some green. We want to see something come out of the ground," said Nole, who brought a camera with him to record ideas for sprucing up his flower garden.

Joey Green, the "mad scientist of clean," and Jeff "Mole Hunter" Holper aren't the only "live" attractions at the Maryland Home and Garden Show. Here are a few others: •Among the must-sees at the show are 19 fully landscaped gardens, including one designed by European Landscapes, winner of Best-in-Show last year. Boordy Vineyards and Linganore Wine Cellars are offering free wine tastings to add to your enjoyment of the gardens. •The Maryland Spring Craft Show features more than 250 artists, including Chester Shuey's handcrafted wood furniture and Charles Adams' metal garden art. Adams' stone and metal birds are featured at the Philadelphia International Flower Show.

There is nothing like a home and garden show to make you want to start from scratch on your own home and garden, and the 27th Maryland Home & Garden Show this weekend at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium is no exception. "I wish I'd thought of that." "Honey, we should think about doing that." And "Can I have your card?" will be the catchphrases at the Cow Palace until the show closes at 6 tomorrow night and we are all left with only our daydreams. There are more than 500 exhibitors in more than 160,000 square feet, and that's a lot of ground to cover.

1. Instant Sauna WHAT IT DOES -- Lets you build a plug-in infra red sauna from a kit. WHY IT'S HOT -- As sembles like Legos. Put it together and get ready to bake. The prefab sauna can go higher than 150 degrees, is made of ce dar and plugs into a 120-volt current, 15 or 20 amp outlet. WHERE TO FIND IT -- Available from Cedrus Saunas of Anaheim, Calif., cedrussauna.com. The maker is American Infra red Sauna Corp. WHAT IT COSTS -- About $5,495 for the two-to-three seater. 2. Stick-on and rub-on wall art WHAT IT DOES -- Creates chalkboards, patterns and murals with peel-and-stick vinyl ma terial or stencil-like deco rations that rub on. WHY IT'S HOT -- Brings out your inner in terior designer.

At just the moment when we think we can't endure another day, let alone another month, of cold weather, it is home-and-garden-show season. For the price of a ticket, we are drawn into warm, moist, sweet-smelling and cavernous buildings where, surrounded by blooming gardens, we can pretend summer has arrived. Double your pleasure this weekend with the opening of both the Philadelphia Flower Show - the granddaddy of them all - at the Philadelphia Convention Center and the Maryland Home & Garden Show at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium.

Anyone who attended the first Taneytown Home and Garden Show last year will not recognize the second and much bigger one scheduled for May 22 at Memorial Park.Last year's show featured about 12 vendors selling plants on the Jubilee grocery store parking lot, said Pam Harlow, a resident who is co-chairwoman of the event.At least, that's what she has been told. She didn't go last year."I didn't even know about it," Harlow said.This year, she and co-chairwoman Melissa Harris expect close to 70 vendors selling plants and crafts, demonstrations on bed planting and building a pond, and rides in a tethered hot-air balloon, weather permitting.

Thursday, most of the glory will go to the cooks of Thanksgiving dinner. But it is also a day that we gardeners can strut our stuff. If we can claim that any Thanksgiving fare -- squash, greens, even the hated Brussels sprouts -- has come from our garden, then we can brag about this accomplishment for months. The opportunity, for example, to boast that you had garden tomatoes on Thanksgiving is part of what motivates us to start rolling in the dirt in April. Having Thanksgiving tomatoes ranks right up there with having ripe tomatoes on the Fourth of July as a milestone of gardening prowess, even if the tomatoes that appear on both those occasions taste like cardboard.