Great Gardening Ideas at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show 2011

Winter. It’s painful, cold, and nearly over – thank gawd! Yeeha!! With the arrival of the Chicago Flower and Garden Show 2011, I was truly able to whiff a bit of Spring happiness and dance with the tulips. Even better than tulips – there were many displays that featured green and sustainable ideas.

Creating a towering garden by using old shipping pallets for plantings is a fantastic solution if you have very little square footage to garden in. Go vertical when you cannot stretch out with gardening utilizing old pallets (photo at right).

Featured in the window box gardens display was this amazing container garden which has found objects from nature incorporated into the design. It is a stunning way to reuse items from nature (like the driftwood below) and enhance a container garden.

From rain water cistern collection tools to ponds to pondless water fountain systems to waterfalls – there were many water features. All were fabulous and had the message that using rain water in the garden is a smart idea. Below is a water fall and pond system created by Aquascape Inc.

Two sustainable garden displays contained chicken houses. More and more communities are encouraging the addition of chickens to the suburban garden and the below chicken house garden was so adorable it would easily fit in a suburban community to help a family in a down economy.

Seeing good sustainable ideas at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show was inspiring – what creative sustainable ideas are you incorporating in your garden this year?