Its looking like we’ll have fantastic weather for our P.E.O benefit next Saturday night, July 24 (6-9pm).  This is always such a fun evening here, with great food, wine and beer, as well as Mike and Kym’s informative and entertaining talk about their favorite plants. 

We’ve added a few new elements to the evening:  we’ll have several fun and interesting gardening info stations scattered around the garden center.  We encourage you to grab a beverage and stroll around as you pick up some great tips.  Also featured will be a Wine Wall:  with your $10 mystery purchase, will you get a $10 bottle or a $75 bottle?  The suspense is part of the fun!!  P.E.O. will be selling tickets that evening to an upcoming garden tour, and all tickets purchased that evening will be entered into a drawing for a Farmington Gardens’ custom designed container garden – winner takes it home that evening!

And thanks to the generosity of Monrovia Nursery, we will have free parting gifts for our guests.

The doors open at 6pm next Saturday, and the $25 tickets will be available at the door.  We hope you can join us for this fun evening for a great cause.  All proceeds will provide college scholarships for local women.

Questions?  Call us at 503-649-4568.

We are hosting our 4th annual benefit for P.E.O. – a philanthropic organization that provides scholarships for women.  This is a fun evening event here at Farmington Gardens, and once again our featured guests will be Mike Darcy and Kym Pokorny.   Mike has been the Garden Guru of Oregon for many years, first with his television show, and now with his KXL radio program ‘In the Garden’.  Kym is a garden writer for the Oregonian, as well as numerous other publications.  We are thrilled they are able to be with us again this year!

Enjoy wine or beer, as well as seasonal hors d’oeuvres, while you stroll the garden center and take in our selection of informal demos on a variety of topics.  There will be an extensive silent auction, featuring great items for home and garden, as well as Mike’s and Kym’s program, “Our Favorites in the Garden.”

This is a ticketed event, and advance purchase is required.  P.E.O. is handling all ticket sales:  tickets are $25 (not available at Farmington Gardens); call 503-645-6401 or email purdyjb@verizon.net to purchase.

Date:  Saturday, July 24  6-9pm

Location:  Farmington Gardens

Food and beverages provided by: Wild Currant Catering, Barefoot Wines, and Hopworks Urban Brewery

During our evening event here on the 8th, both Mike Darcy from KXL and Kym Pokorny from the Oregonian fairly gushed about their love for crape myrtles  (Lagerstroemia indica) – Kym was impressed they are tough enough to live in an area of her garden where she can’t get much else to grow, and Mike loves their year-round interest.  You will find lots of good reasons to include one or two in your garden this year, as they:

• do very well in dry sites, once they are established
• thrive in containers, allowing you to move them to different locations of your garden
• have attractive bark, which makes for an interesting focal point in the winter, when the leaves have fallen
• have multiple trunks, particularly nice when they are pruned up so as to show them off
• can be trained espalier-fashion against a wall or fence
• are usually less than 25 feet tall, so are perfect for understory plantings or a focal point in a small garden
• provide a profusion of summer blossoms
• will usually bloom for 4 weeks or longer

What’s not to love about all that?!