Building "the Birdsong", days 1 and 2

The Arboretum Foundation show garden on the first building day on Saturday. This year's garden is called 'Birdsong', displaying three different habitats for birds to nest, eat and live in - more about it in my next post. Pretty difficult to imagine this as a habitat for birds...

The Northwest Flower and Garden Show starts tomorrow, and I've been helping to build a show garden for the Arboretum Foundation for the last four days.  The process was immensely satisfying for my inner Bob-the-Builder; huge trucks and other power machines around, lots of hammering, sawing and shoveling; and then finally, planting and mulching. After just 4 to 5 hours on site, I came home happy and tired, ready for a warm shower and a glass of wine. Tonight, I'm attending the Opening Night party, so before revealing any of the completed show gardens, I just wanted to show some pictures of the building process. Tomorrow, I'll be back commenting the designs and plants of this year's show - after spending hours on the site watching them emerge from the plastic covered, grey concrete floor, I feel like I really know them in detail...

Sawdust arriving to our booth; tons and tons of it, all to be shoveled by hand to the right locations...

The sawdust, pathways and main trees are in place... way to go. 

Other guys built a small hut/green house; cute, still difficult to say where this is going...

These guys lifted some serious tree stumps into their show garden... wonder how it will come out?

Our natural stone bird bath arriving, it weighs about half a tonne...

Arranging the bird bath in right place is not the lightest task to do.

 Train of fresh, young bulbs and perennials, all to be "sacrificed" on the show garden altar... 

These guys decided to underplant their magnificent, 150-year old Japanese maple with ...pink tulips??

Our plants, most of the native to the Pacific Northwest, starting to arrive. Now just some black mulch on the sawdust, and then the planting starts. I'll be back tomorrow...