Next year in Buffalo

Hard to decide what was most impressive about last weekend’s garden blogger’s meet-up in Chicago. About 50 bloggers were in attendance, including many who might be reading this, so I won’t go heavily into details—others have reported on the events before me.


Suffice it to say that we visited several amazing public gardens, including the Botanic, Lurie Gardens, Lincoln Park, and the LP conservatory. Others also visited the Garfield Conservatory and a private garden outside the city. I’ve got a selection of pictures from the various stops here, as well as some from two charming private gardens: chef Rick Bayless’s and Chicago artist/blogger Carolyn Gail's. I think I loved Friday’s trip to the Botanic Gardens and Saturday’s walk around the Caldwell Lily Pool the best. Though the purple swaths at the Lurie were nearly everyone’s favorite, I think I preferred exploring gardens where surprises lurked around every corner.


It was delightful to spend more time with bloggers I barely got to speak with in Austin, and I met a few I had never seen face to face. While I don’t know where I’ll meet up with them in 2011, I do know where we’ll see each other in 2010. Buffalo! Yikes. While Buffalo cannot equal the spectacular public spaces we saw in Chicago, I am confident that we can pull together a great visit built around private gardens. Anyway, I know it will be fun.

No dates yet, but we’ll be cementing some details soon. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who made last weekend’s get-together as wonderful as it was. I hope to see many of the people shown in these images at the GWA conference in Raleigh this September.

And, say, Heather's comment gave me an idea. Got some ideas for the Buffalo event? Comments? Suggestions? Drop 'em here.