Okay, imagine with me for a second. You are walking into your classic, sterile convention center that hosts all of the trade shows, all of the business conferences.

You go into the main room, and instead of walking into a normal trade show that has lines and lines of booths and fluorescent lighting, you step in to a magical, whimsical garden.

You smell mulch and trees and flower scents. You hear bird song. The lights are dimmed.

And before you are 20 different professionally designed and installed garden landscapes

for your pleasure to peruse.

Beyond that, you do have rows and rows of booths, not of people trying to sell you

Wi-Fi or phone plans, but people who are selling houseplants, garden plants, trailing Jasmine,

thrift shops, artisan makers who create really

beautiful things for your gardens. And with your ticket, you get to attend over a hundred

different seminars on every aspect of gardening you could dream of. That is the Northwest Flower

and Garden Show plant friends. I just got back from Seattle. This was my

third year being there, and I have a lot of thoughts and opinions after immersing myself in garden

culture all week. So let's dive into what I learned. Welcome to the Growing Joy with Plants podcast, where we not only learn how to care for plants

successfully, but how to simply and affordably use our plant babies to cultivate more joy in

our lives by doing so. I'm Maria, former plant killer turned happy plant lady, author of

Growing Joy, The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating

Happiness, speaker, podcaster, and most importantly, your new best plant friend. On Growing

Joy with Plants, you'll find conversations about house plant care, gardening tutorials, and wellness

through the lens of plants. Plant care is self-care on growing joy.

Hello, plant friends. My name is Maria. I am here to help you grow joy by connecting with plants.

Sometimes we talk about houseplants, sometimes we talk about nature. Today we're going to be

talking about gardening, but specifically,

...