Fall Flower and Garden Fest

One of the many historic homes in Crystal Springs, MS.

Located just outside the tiny, historic town of Crystal Springs, Mississippi

you will find the Mississippi State University

Truck Crops Experiment Station.

MSU Truck Crops Experiment Station

 On the second weekend of October this serene setting is over run with gardeners attending the Fall Flower and Garden Fest, the largest home gardening show in the southeast. There are tours, experts, vendors, and food booths.

I have heard about this festival for years and was excited to attend this year, when I got a better offer. My sisters and I are headed to New York City for a few fall days of hanging out and having fun! I didn't hesitate to sign up for the NYC trip, but I have to admit that I was sad about having to postpone my trip to the Experiment Station for another year.

But wait!!!!! I must be living right, because I found out that the Experiment Station hosts the Master Garden district meeting before the festival to give MGs a sneak preview and private tour of the gardens!!!! Oh, happy day!! Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too!

So I rode up with my new Master Gardener friends and enjoyed a wonderful day of flowers, vegetables, and fun!

A beautiful variety of lantana.

Cannas of every color.

We were given three tours- one of the flower garden, vegetable garden, and butterfly garden.

The vegetable garden was impressive in spite of the fact that Mississippi experienced a monsoon season this year.

We also enjoyed the shade garden which included my favorite idea of the day, the dead tree garden!

 The shade garden is landscaped and maintained by a group f Master Gardeners. They told me that one morning after a nasty thunderstorm, they arrived at the garden to find a tree had fallen onto their newly landscaped area. They decided to  adopt a 'lemons/lemonade' attitude about the situation and the result was a favorite of everyone at the Experiment Station!!

 They had taken a twelve foot portion of the dead tree and trimmed the large limbs so that they were each about three feet in length. Then using the chain saw, they cut out depressions deep enough to hold some potting soil. Each depression was filled with shade loving plants like ferns and impatiens.  Then each depression was topped off with moss. They even stuffed plants into the end of branches.

I'll have to wait until next year for the garden vendors and food booths at the Fall Flower and Garden Fest, but what a treat to get to see the gardens and spend time with gardeners on a beautiful fall day in rural Mississippi, our new home!

Love ya'll,

Shelli

Summer ends, and Autumn comes,

and he who would have it otherwise

would have high tide always and a full moon every night;

and thus he would never know the rhythms that are at the heart of life.

~Hal Borland

Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
’Neath the cover of October skies
And all the leaves on the trees are falling
To the sound of the breezes that blow
And I’m trying to please to the calling
Of your heartstrings that play soft and low...
~Van Morrison, "Moondance," 

[T]here is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky...
~Percy Bysshe Shelley