at the county fair

Are gar­den­ers ter­ror­ists? You’d think so look­ing at the sign posted out­side the San Diego County Fair.

This gar­dener took advan­tage of the “Fur­lough Fri­day” deal for state employ­ees (free admis­sion!) and checked out the offer­ings of the fair for the first time in half a decade. I guess the ratio­nale of free admis­sion was to get more peo­ple in the gate to par­take of the rides and stunt food–you know, the bizarre offer­ings that often involve impal­ing some­thing on a stick, stick­ing it in bat­ter, and then deep-frying it. I searched all over for the worst of the worst stunt food but the best (worst?) I could find was a stand offer­ing “fried Twinkie lattes”–really noth­ing more weird than a vanilla latte–and this trailer sell­ing choco­late cov­ered bacon. Nei­ther dish really seemed to be deep fried, so I guess they’re get­ting with the health-conscious kick…

My main des­ti­na­tion was the out­door gar­den dis­plays, where the main point of each dis­play seemed to be either attract­ing new cus­tomers to the land­scape firms there or–in the case of the non-profit insti­tu­tions and gar­den clubs–education. The fair’s never been about land­scape design as a high art, but there’s always inter­est­ing stuff there.

If there was theme to the dis­plays this year, “edi­bles” seemed to be the word, keep­ing up the health-conscious theme of the not-deep-fried chocolate-covered bacon. This dis­play by the San Diego Botanic Gar­den in Coop­er­a­tion with the San Diego Water Author­ity won the prize for the best edi­ble land­scape. The dis­play also won an award for the exhibit that arranged plants in a way that demon­strated “good taste.”

It fea­tured food crops and orna­men­tals of all sorts as long as they fit into the purple-pink-green-silver palette, and demon­strated that a gar­den with veg­gies could be as pulled together as any other gar­den. In its com­bi­na­tion of cool-weather crops (such as pur­ple cab­bage) with warm-weather ones (like basil and squash) it was also a reminder that this is a gar­den show than a real-world garden.

San Diego Botanic Gar­den dis­play: A fence row planted with orna­men­tals, kale and squash.


Here are a few more pho­tos of dis­plays that played with the edi­bles theme:

Arti­chokes and olive trees in a space designed by Lane McClel­land and Lau­rie Roberts.

Orna­men­tals and veg­gies hang­ing in burlap, also in the McClelland-Roberts garden.


Grow what you love–the entrance to the same McClelland-Roberts gar­den, fea­tur­ing corn, chard, chives and other edibles.

Wendy Slijk’s dis­play showed off this hang­ing pot with squash.


Home Depot’s entry fea­tured a lit­tle grape vineyard.

A scare­crow guard­ing veg­gie beds in a dis­play by the San Diego Hor­ti­cul­tural Society.

In addi­tion to edi­bles, drink­ables got to play a role, as in this dis­play of Agave tequi­lana by the Palo­mar Cac­tus and Suc­cu­lent Soci­ety. This might not be one of the great land­scape agaves, but how can you fault a plant that is the source of tequila?


Erigeron glau­cus cv. Boun­ti­ful at the Tree of Life Nurs­ery display.

I kept my eye out for uses of native plants, but there were almost none. Part of that is prob­a­bly because the major­ity of the charis­matic flow­er­ing natives do their thing at the end of win­ter or dur­ing spring. The one main excep­tion was a small dis­play by native plant spe­cial­ist Tree of Life Nursery.

Brit­tons chalk dud­leya and red mon­keyflower in the Tree of Life Nursery’s display.


Inside, in the adja­cent exhibits build­ing, there was a flower show going on, with roses and dahlias and glad­i­o­lus and lots of cub­bies with flower arrange­ments. And that’s where I saw a few more natives, where they had a cat­e­gory for cut native flow­ers. So there was more mon­keyflower here, along with one of the bush pop­pies (Den­drome­con) and some matil­ija poppies.

Really, who doesn’t love these matil­i­jas? The last photo is of one of them. Next post I’ll share some other sightings.


June 28 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • •

8 Responses to “at the county fair”

  1. Wendy on 28 Jun 2010 at 10:16 am #

    wow, really cool! funny sign. yum — county fair food sounds great! I would imag­ine the fried twinkie latte would be really good. I have the java chip frap­pu­ci­nos (with bits of brownie or choco­late) — it would be sim­i­lar I bet. And choco­late cov­ered bacon??! YUM! I’ve bought ridicu­lously expen­sive bars of this at gourmet stores before. hur­ray for the county fair!

  2. ricki - sprig to twig on 28 Jun 2010 at 6:00 pm #

    In Port­land, there is a “hip” shop called Voodoo Donuts. They fea­ture a bacon maple bar that has been fea­tured on The Splen­did Table and else­where. I keep mean­ing to try it.

  3. tina on 29 Jun 2010 at 3:21 am #

    Well I hope after nearly 25 years you had a great time at the fair. I love county fairs for the ag exhi­bi­tions and just the whole atmos­phere of it. Not that I go that often though. You are right about the gar­dens being show. I hate it when they are so unre­al­is­tic but they do still look good. Funny on the no gar­den tools allowed. Nice catch! Maybe the admin­is­tra­tor think some­one may help them­selves to the veggies?

  4. Matti on 29 Jun 2010 at 11:21 am #

    The county fair is the only time of the year where I do not feel bad eat all the choco­late bacon I can carry. But with­out my gar­den tools, I am not cer­tain how I would fend off the crowds from steal­ing my stash of it. Love the post! Matti

  5. George on 29 Jun 2010 at 2:33 pm #

    Glad they didn’t pre­vent you from bring­ing the tool that really mat­tered in this case…your cam­era! Nice pics!

  6. Jean on 29 Jun 2010 at 6:05 pm #

    It’s a relief to know that the healthy food move­ment has made it to the fairs and that the chocolate-covered bacon is not deep fried. It’s also reas­sur­ing to know that peo­ple can attend the fair with­out fear of any­one com­mit­ting may­hem with a trowel! LOL

  7. ryan on 29 Jun 2010 at 11:29 pm #

    I’d like to some­day win an award for arrang­ing plants in a way that shows good taste. What does it say that I haven’t yet? I like the county fair. Always full of inter­est­ing things to see.

  8. Susan Morrison on 30 Jun 2010 at 5:44 am #

    Sounds like a well planned event — you can chow down on some choco­late cov­ered bacon, then snip a lit­tle mint from the edi­ble gar­den to freshen your breath, and no one’s the wiser!

    I also have not been to a county fair in years and was think­ing of going to the Alameda county fair this week­end. Had not real­ized there might be gar­den dis­plays; thanks for the tip.

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