Watch out for low-flying Brussels sprouts

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, March 22, 2006

t The colorful Ciscoe Morris brings flair to Saturday’s Home and Garden Show.

In spring, thoughts turn to re-feathering the nest and what better place to look for inspiration than the Third Annual Bainbridge Island Home and Garden Show.

This year’s event, March 25 at Woodward Middle School, is the biggest to date with 75 exhibitors, demonstrations, a slate of special guests and prize drawings. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., visitors will find all the information they need for DIY projects, indoors and out.

Famous enough to go by one name, “Ciscoe” – surname Morris, the area’s popular garden guru and one of the show’s featured presenters – will share his newest ideas in gardening, whether coyote urine is good for anything and a few of his favorite plants before taking questions from the audience.

“I do bring Brussels sprouts and throw them at people who stump me,” Morris said. “I did make a guy cry. He couldn’t get anything to grow. If only he left it alone, it would’ve been fine. Those poor plants. They didn’t have a prayer.”

Bainbridge Island gardening experts also will share their expertise.

Terry Moyemont and Terri Stanley of Mesogeo Greenhouse and Nursery will discuss how to grow Mediterranean and tropical plants. And Moyemont, an award-winning photographer and video producer, will narrate a brief slide show on European gardens.

Their “booth” will be the columned Moroccan pavilion Moyemont built for the recent Northwest Garden & Flower Show. Visitors may walk through the pavilion and even purchase it, along with plants in custom pots hand-painted by Stanley, or plants without the pots.

“We’re releasing the new spring line,” Moyemont said, adding the pots display “environmentally friendly Dutch paints and a Mediterranean lime paint, an exterior paint. These are nice peasant pots from Vietnam.”

Stepping in for Marianne Binetti are islanders George Little and David Lewis, whose Little and Lewis garden-gallery, color-washed concrete sculptures and installations have garnered worldwide acclaim.

For their first appearance at the home and garden show, they will explore “the idea that the garden is a personal response to the beauty in nature, as is any work of art. It can be sculptural and painterly, as a fine garden always is,” Little said. “We discuss the sculptural quality of gardening as well as sculpture in the garden.”

For those interested in a home away from home, the island’s Tom Kelly will impart knowledge from his latest book, “Cashing in on a Second Home in Mexico – How to Buy and Profit from Property South of the Border.” Kelly is a longtime real estate writer and host of a real estate show on KIRO radio.

You watch “Antiques Roadshow” and it got you thinking: How valuable is Grandfather Bertram’s silver snuff box? Is Aunt Helen’s prized cloisonne vase really an antique?

Gather up your goods – maximum five items per person – and bring them to the home show, where professional certified appraisers Kathleen Victor and Dan Jensen will render “a verbal approximation of the market value” based on their knowledge. This is a market value, not a replacement cost, added Victor.

“(You) can bring anything in the line of personal property, from furniture to tools, including antiques and fine art,” Victor said. “We don’t like to receive money or stamps or guns, daggers or knives, for obvious reasons.”

Victor and Jensen look forward to hearing the story behind each item. Chairs will be set up so others can listen, too.

“I hear the most wonderful provenance. Sometimes it can increase the value (of an item), if an important political person gave it or someone traveled and met someone and obtained it there,” Victor said.

“We are detectives. We use inductive and deductive reasoning and then we set a value.”

* * * * *

Home improvements

The Bainbridge Island Home & Garden Show is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 25 at Woodward Middle School, 9125 Sportsman Club Road. Tickets are $3; children under 12 are admitted free. For more information see www.bainbridgechamber.com or call the chamber at 842-3700.

The Home & Garden Show’s guest speakers cover a wealth of ground:

* 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. – “Antique Evaluations” by professional appraisers Kathleen Victor of Victor Appraisal Services and Don Jensen of Cotswold Appraisal Service

* 11 a.m. – “Mediterranean Plants for the Northwest” with Terri Stanley and Terry Moyemont of Mesogeo Gardens & Nursery

* Noon – “Staging Your Home for Sale” with Erika Callero of Callero Staging

• 1 p.m. – “The Garden as Sculpture” with George Little and David Lewis of Little and Lewis

* 2 p.m. – “Cashing in on a Second Home in Mexico” with real estate author Tom Kelly

* 3 p.m. – Ciscoe Morris, host of radio and TV’s “Gardening With Ciscoe.”

The Home & Garden Show is presented by the Bainbridge Island Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Wells Fargo Bank, Prudential Northwest Real Estate, Bainbridge Gardens, Bad Blanche Collections, Absolute Concrete Works, Bainbridge Wireless Computer, Opus Northwest and the Bainbridge Island Review.