08 March 2010

From Washington: Home and Garden Show Offers Products, Inspiration

Herald Net


George Deane waited outside Comcast Arena on Friday in a line of people making their way into the annual Everett Home and Garden Show.

He was prepared to shop for the flowers he wants to bloom in the garden outside his Everett home. He checked his wallet for notes containing the names of the specific flower seeds he came to find.

“I think this is my third time here (at the Everett Home and Garden Show),” Deane said. “I’m really looking for some annual flower seeds. I don’t need to go through the big kitchen appliances and the roofs.”

Marysville residents Sharon and Kirk Quintoa visit the show every year and walked by vendor booths on Friday thinking of the things they want to add to their new home. They stopped in front of a heat pump on display.

“We’re looking for decking and we thought a heat pump,” Sharon said. “We redecorated and remodeled our old house by coming to the home show. We got ideas. We’re looking for things we need to do in our new home.”

After working their way through booths of vendors on the terrace level of the arena, William and Diana Routledge of Mukilteo sat down in seats overlooking landscaping, kitchen, flooring, solar and other displays spread across the arena floor. They were pleased to see some of the same businesses they recently chose to help with their kitchen remodel at the show.

“In about two months time, we’ll be doing some kitchen remodeling and we pretty much have made our decisions but we’re coming through seeing if there’s something that we missed,” Diana said. “Some of the things we’ve already decided on or chosen from what we consider to be good companies are represented here. It underscores the fact we made the right choices.”

Others came just to browse during the first day of the seventh annual Everett Home and Garden Show.

“We’re always looking for ideas for the house, just ideas,” Bernie Kania of Camano Island said. “It’s just interesting to see all the products in one spot.”

Attendance at the Everett Home and Garden Show has grown since 2003 when it was first held in Comcast Arena, according to Everett Home and Garden Show president Jim Ashe. This year’s three-day show boasts more than 400 booths and 250 different exhibitors.

“The show will be full and look full in spite of the economy,” he said. “Every year is a little bit different, and what you try to do is bring in exhibits and the kinds of the things people want to see.”

Many people who passed by Mike Siders’ landscaping display were looking for low maintenance landscaping ideas, he said.

The owner of Whispering Pines Custom Landscapes in Everett, Siders said questions about how to start low maintenance projects are common.

“Everyone really wants to downsize as far as maintenance goes,” he said. “I think a lot of people are tired of being prisoners of the economy, and the beauty of landscaping and home remodeling is it can be done in phases if you have a budget.”

Whether she finds something at this year’s show or not, the Everett Home and Garden Show is an event Janet Turner of Snohomish said she never misses.

“I just like seeing what new trends are coming,” she said.

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