Showing Off

Participating in a home and garden show is a time-consuming endeavor, but the results can mean increased publicity for a landscape company.

That’s what garden designer Kevin O’Brien has discovered through Lifestyle Landscaping’s annual involvement in the National Home and Garden Show in Cleveland, Ohio.

“The value we receive from the show is exposure,” O’Brien explained. Lifestyle Landscaping has taken part in the show for the past 11 years. The design-installation firm, based in North Ridgeville, Ohio, has earned first-place recognition for eight of its entries.

Featuring a cascading waterfall, flowering perennials and a number of blooming trees, this year’s Lifestyle entry earned the Founder’s Award. The recognition is a peer-voted honor that goes to the entry receiving top marks from other landscape contractors at the exhibition. Twenty other landscape companies participated this year.

But awards are not the only benefit for those that enter home and garden shows. The constant influx of show goers gives Lifestyle and other companies numerous opportunities to show off their skills and services to potential customers. This year’s show drew about 300,000 people.

And added publicity for National Home and Garden Show exhibitors comes with garden celebrities. Each garden entry has a Cleveland celebrity’s name attached to it. Lifestyle’s celebrity this year was Nancy Alden, a popular local radio personality who conducted a live broadcast from the show and interviewed a Lifestyle team member.

“It's a great opportunity to talk about the value our company can give a potential client,” O’Brien shared. “She also mentions Lifestyle Landscaping before and after music breaks as the company who built ‘her’ garden.”

Lifestyle also invites existing clients down to the show. “It is a great way to stay in touch and to say ’thanks’ for allowing us to be of service,” O’Brien noted.

Throughout the years, Lifestyle has beefed up the size, quality and creativity of its show entries. With these increased efforts, the company has had to dedicate a significant chunk of time to the undertaking.

An estimated 402 hours went into building the aging barn and springhouse. And at least 512 more hours were spent actually installing the garden over a four-day period.

“This year's garden was ambitious because of the scale of the elements in it,” O’Brien expressed. “We built a large, naturalistic waterfall using large stones that required an excavator to place, a barn built from new material made to look old, and a stone springhouse facade. Lots of prominent structures and details requiring excellent craftsmanship to successfully pull off.”

And that ambitious design required quite a commitment.

Twelve people worked to set up the garden each day and, depending on the day, sometimes 16. Since September, four to six Lifestyle team member have worked each month to prepare and build the entry – weather permitting. And about 8 to 10 hours were spent tearing down the garden after the show ended.

Generally, one person designs the garden with conceptual input from the other designers. Dave Hoffman has designed and coordinated the garden in past years, but that duty was turned over to O’Brien this year. And although he was responsible for the design and directed its installation, O’Brien recognized the integral role of all who contributed.

“It is a total team effort,” he said.

The author is Assistant Editor – Internet for Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at aanderson@lawnandlandscape.com.