Podcast

Sunday at the Flower Show

March 23, 2019May 17, 2019 Mike Nowak Avani Shah, Basil and Begonia, Baylor Chapman, Brandon Losey, Chicago Flower and Garden Show, Dolly Foster, Flowertales, Garden Gourmet, gardening, Peggy Malecki, sustainability, The Mike Nowak Show, William Moss

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The 2019 Chicago Flower & Garden Show

(March 24, 2019) Some folks call it the Flower Show. Its real name is the Chicago Flower & Garden Show. It has happened in one form or another in the Windy City since about 1847. And once again, The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki is broadcasting live from Navy Pier as part of this iconic Chicago event.

“Flowertales: The Story Grows On,” is a continuation of the theme that was introduced last year. The unique role of flowers, plants and gardens in literature and our lives is interpreted through the various show exhibits. Sunday, March 24 is the final day of the event.

As usual at this event, we’re featuring of bunch of talented horticulturists and even chefs.

Monarch butterflies massed at the winter home in Mexico. Photo by Dolly Foster.

We start with Dolly Foster, who was on our show in August of last year. She is a landscape horticulturist for the Oak Lawn Park District, has been a Master Gardener for 19 years, an Indiana Accredited Horticulturist for 17 and a Certified Arborist since 2008. Lately, she has spent a lot of her focus on butterflies, specifically monarchs. Her garden at home has been a Monarch Waystation since 2011 and she manages 3 more in the Oak Lawn Park District.

She is giving a presentation today called How To Be A Mother To A Butterfly, Yes, YOU!!! And she recently made a trip to Mexico to view the winter breeding grounds for monarch butterflies, which she chronicles on her blog. Foster will bring us up to date on the monarch butterflies as they head to their summer homes in North America. You can follow their flight north on this interactive map at the Journey North website.
Next up is Masterchef Junior Avani Shah, who will be doing a demonstration at the Garden Gourmet stage at 3:30 p.m. That in itself is pretty remarkable, given that she’s a 6th grader who has already been on national television, though she didn’t win the competition in Season 5…when she was all of 8 years old.

Nonetheless, according to Avani’s mother, she is still active with the Master Chef brand. Last summer she traveled back and forth between Atlanta and Connecticut for the first summer of the CampMaster Chef. Not many of us have a biography when we’re ten, but hers reads this way.

Avani’s interest in the culinary arts stemmed from early experiences of cooking pancakes with her dad and grew as she learned to perfect them on her own. Expanding her range, Avani looked to her grandfather for guidance and inspiration in mastering family recipes and traditional Indian dishes rooted in her family’s heritage. While Avani’s signature dish on the show is Coconut Curry Chicken over Jasmine Rice, baking is her primary focus outside of the time constraints of the show competitions.

Then it’s a regular on The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki. William Moss the Garden Boss. He’s the maestro of this year’s Potting Parties, where you create your own mixed container of plants. William shares tips and tricks-of-the-trade on how you can create your own first spectacular container of spring.
In the second hour, we start with Brandon Losey from Ringers Landscaping, which is part of Garden 7: The Lost Words. As the garden description explains,

“When the most recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary – widely used in schools around the world – was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. The words were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of

these “lost words” included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voicemail. The news of these substitutions – the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual – became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world.”

Whoa. This garden is built on that them and we’ll ask Brandon to expound on what is a disturbing cultural phenomenon.

Nicole Gjeldum and Elizabeth Guzaldo founded Basil and Begonia, a garden design company in Naperville, Illinois, in 2016. In their own words,

Our goal is to connect people back to their gardens, to better ourselves and the environment. Our philosophy is to create unique, sustainable spaces using native plants, organic vegetables, structures, hardscapes and a design concept that centers around our clients’ lifestyles.

Honestly, we just want to encourage people to get into nature, value it, benefit from all of the awesomeness it provides. To just get out of their homes and find a space that speaks to them. If you want to grow some flowers to cut and bring that sunshine inside, we can help you. If you want us to teach you to grow food to share, we can help you. If you want a reading nook in your yard, we can help you. We just love our environment and want to help others connect with it as well.

They’re doing a presentation called Small Space Garden Design at the show on Sunday, and we’ll chat with them about that.

In about two weeks, Baylor Chapman will release a book called Decorating with Plants: What to Choose, Ways to Style, and How to Make Them Thrive. That’s also the title of her talk today at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show. She gives advice like this from her book:

Baylor Chapman walks readers through everything they need to know to bring houseplants into their home. First, there’s Plant Care 101: from how to assess light conditions to tricks for keeping your plants alive while on vacation, Chapman gives readers the simple, foundational info they need to ensure their plants will thrive. Then she introduces us to 28 of her favorites—specimens that are tough as nails but oh-so-stylish, from the eye-catching Rubber Tree to the delicate Cape Primrose.

As usual, we want to talk to as many folks as we can in two hours. Tune in at 9:00 a.m….or come down to the show. The doors open at 10:00.