BANGOR, Maine — Vicki Grant of Bangor smiled Saturday as she watched her 6-year-old granddaughter, Brenna Hurd, plant a pumpkin seed in a tiny terracotta pot that she decorated with stickers in the children’s area of Through the Garden Gate’s display at the 2017 BDN Maine Garden Show at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
The child also made a simple birdfeeder consisting of Cheerios strung on a pipe cleaner bent into a wreath shape while at the Corinna plant nursery’s booth.
“I’m babysitting for her this weekend,” said Grant, who was shopping for the makings of a succulent garden. “We’ve been before, the two of us. This is something to do.”
This year’s show featured more than 60 vendors offering a range of garden and landscaping products and services as well as healthy living and food products, jewelry, clothes and more.
For many showgoers, the annual garden event was a chance to be reminded that warmer weather lies ahead.
“Everybody’s been really cheery and optimistic about the future weather prospects,” Charlie Longo, a former Bangor city councilor, said Saturday while staffing the Liberty Mutual booth.
“It seems like everyone I’ve spoken to today has been really excited, you know, the quality of the vendors and every booth has been really fantastic,” he said.
Plymouth resident Sharon Pratt, who doesn’t garden but has friends who do, came to check out the landscaping displays.
“I came just to get out and enjoy a semi-spring day, to see who actually followed the theme of the show,” said Pratt, who particularly enjoyed the display created by DePaulo Landscaping and Property Maintenance of Veazie.
The display was one of the big hits of this year’s show — both with the public and with this year’s judges: Todd Bangs of Windswept Gardens, Bangor City Council Chairman Joe Baldacci, Councilor Gibran Graham and Sarah Walker Caron, features editor at the Bangor Daily News, which organizes the annual show.
In keeping with this year’s theme, “Flower Power,” DePaulo Landscaping owner Jacob Earl presented a display featuring none other than a vintage Volkswagen Beetle.
“We got it in Burnham, Maine,” said Earl, who last fall bought the business from former owner Cameron DePaolo, who now works for him.
“We had the idea and went on Craigslist and the next day I found one. We went down to Burnham the next day [to pick up the VW Bug]. It was in the middle of a cow field. Yeah, it was funny,” he said.
“It’s been great. Everyone’s loving it. It seems like everyone used to have one. I heard that at least 25 times,” he said with a laugh.
With flowers and foliage tucked inside and spilling out from the former engine compartment at its rear and surrounded by plantings of such spring favorites as tulips, hyacinths and daffodils, to name a few, the Bug was a sight to behold.
The display required some planning as Earl had to force several varieties of bulbs to flower, which he did in the greenhouse at Sprague’s Nursery & Garden Center.
Earl’s display took the first place Best in Show award.
Second place Best in Show honors went to Hickory Dickory Decks, which entered a display featuring a deck and hot tub decorated with a colorful selection of flowers, and third to Maine in Maine Landscaping’s wooden moose and deer, also accented by a selection of garden flowers.
Some garden show regulars, however, were disappointed that there were fewer gardening and landscaping displays and less foot traffic than in previous years.
Betty Snook, a New Hampshire vendor of therapeutic magnetic jewelry, was one of them.
“I won’t be back next year,” said Snook, who has been participating in the show since 2014.
Longo noted that this year’s garden show in Bangor coincided with the Boston Flower & Garden Show.
“A lot of the vendors went down there,” he said.
The garden show opened Friday and wraps up on Sunday, when it will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.