Saturday at the greenhouse...

Garden Walk Buffalo had a booth at this weekend's Fall Fest at Lockwood's Greehouses in Hamburg this weekend. It was a great chance to spend a half day at a nursery - a great nursery - and get to hang with other plant nerds.

Elizabeth, of Garden Rant and Gardening While Intoxicated was apparently there, but not while I was I guess. She posted about this Fall Fest on Garden Rant, here. Please read her post. She's a professional writer and more coherent. Me, I'm a rambler and am more apt to ramble without purpose. To the right are some of the grafted apple espaliers. Each branch is a different variety of apple. I didn't find out how much something like this costs. I am curious though.

This Fall Garden Fest was previously in the charming village of East Aurora, home of the Roycroft artists colony, in the early 1900s. It was a great place for the festival, amongst the Roycroft shop and Roycroft Inn. I don't know why it was moved.

It is a good, maybe better, "fest" here though. Lockwood's and the local experts gave classes and workshops on topics like Hydrangeas (more than 90 attendees!); Fall Containers; Great Plants, Better Gardens; Groundcovers; Keep the Annuals, Bring in the Houseplants, Ornamental Grasses and Fall Bulbs for Spring Bloom. Attendance for each surpassed their expectations. To the right is master gardener and our local gardening guru, Sally Cunningham. She's got regular TV segment (see it here), a one-hour radio call-in weekend garden show and a regular column in the Buffalo News each Friday.

There were a decent number of "exhibitors" selling everything from espaliered fruit trees to paintings of espaliered fruit trees. Garden Walk was invited to have a table and hand out information (Lockwood's is one of our first corporate sponsors ever). We also sold raffle tickets for a basket filled with a Garden Walk hat, shirt, tote bag, magnet, hard cover Garden Walk Book and a $25 gift certificate to Lockwood's. (Thank you Lockwood's!).

The winner happened to be a Garden Walk gardener from 16th Street–one of the more popular gardens on the Walk. It was all on the up and up. I'm sure of it. To the right is Upstate Gardener's Journal's Maria. You can visit their blog here.

The invitation to the Fall Garden Fest was very handsome, if I do say so myself. Full disclosure–I designed it in trade for plants! I was able to pick up a good amount of plants I schlepped for three-and-a half hours in the car to my mother's cottage. Her garden was virtually plowed under in the destruction of the old cottage and construction of the new cottage. But we don't talk about that three-and-a-half hour car ride with my allergy-prone wife. It's a bad topic.