Amid Blooms and Borders: How to Make the Most of a Flower Show or Garden Tour

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There's something quietly dazzling about the hush that falls over a crowd in front of a prize-winning dahlia. At a good flower show or garden tour, time slows, and the everyday static of texts, traffic, and tension dissolves into the language of petals, pollinators, and people who are just as happy as you are to spend a few hours standing in awe of a climbing rose. If you're headed to your first event this season or your fiftieth, know this: a garden, curated or wild, invites you to meet it on its own terms. That’s the point. It’s a temporary passport to the rhythms of the natural world—designed, arranged, and still somehow unpredictable. So, how do you get more than just a pleasant afternoon out of the experience?

Arrive With Curiosity, Not Just a Camera

The temptation to start snapping photos the second you enter the grounds is real—especially when morning light hits the foxgloves just right. But before reaching for your phone, pause and think things through. Let your eyes adjust to the palette and scale around you. Think about what’s catching your attention. Ask yourself why a certain vignette works so well: Is it the contrast? The repetition? The choice to let one variety spill messily over a path while others stay in strict formation? You’ll walk away not just with pretty pictures, but with ideas that can shape your own growing spaces.

Talk to the Gardeners—Then Listen Hard

At a flower show, you'll spot the folks who got up early to mist their blooms and arrange each petal to perfection. On a garden tour, they’re the quiet ones with dirt still under their fingernails, mingling near the back. These are the people you want to talk to. Ask open-ended questions about what didn’t work this season, what surprised them, and which plant they’d never grow again. Don’t worry about sounding amateurish—gardeners, especially the good ones, love sharing war stories and weather gripes. And if you're lucky, you might leave with a tip that changes how you grow tomatoes forever.

Document Your Favorites for On-the-Go Use

You’ll see dozens—maybe hundreds—of plants during a garden tour or flower show, and there’s no chance you’ll remember them all without some help. Bring a small notebook or use a free scanner app with text recognition to instantly grab plant labels, garden signage, or even quick care tips from posted displays. It’s the kind of small prep that pays off big when you’re sketching out your own garden plan weeks later. Many of these apps are optimized for on-the-go use, so you won’t miss a beat while moving through each new garden scene.

Seek Out the Imperfections

Despite the polish, no garden is immune to reality. Look for the aphids, the ragged leaves, the bare patches someone clearly meant to fill but didn’t quite get to. These details tell the truer story. They’re a reminder that gardens are living things—and that perfection is mostly a myth. If you're viewing a small urban garden, you might see the constraints: tricky sunlight, limited water, or the neighbor’s fence that casts an unwelcome shadow. Instead of viewing these as flaws, try thinking of them as the garden’s biography. There's a kind of grace in seeing where someone chose to work with, not against, their limitations.

Linger in the Transitions

Paths, thresholds, and sightlines—these in-between areas are often where the magic hides. At a flower show, it might be the space between themed displays where one style hands off to another. On a tour, it could be a tucked-away bench at the end of a hedge, or the turn of a gravel path that reveals a hidden arbor. These transitions reveal a gardener’s sense o'f narrative. It's like reading between the lines of a novel—you start to understand not just what they love, but how they move through space, what they prioritize, what they want to share or conceal.

Plan Around Comfort, Not Just the Calendar

Every seasoned garden-goer knows the difference between a rushed visit and one that gives you room to breathe. Many public gardens provide maps, winding trails, and shaded spots to rest—some even offer refreshments, live demos, or seasonal events that are worth building your day around. A bit of planning makes all the difference, especially if you're hoping to hit multiple stops or stick around for golden-hour photography. Sites like Colorado Garden Clubs make it easy to find upcoming garden tours and explore which ones match your pace, whether you're chasing peak bloom or just a quiet afternoon among the foxgloves.

Leave With Less Than You Came For

That sounds counterintuitive, especially if you walked in with a tote bag and a mental shopping list. But the best garden experiences aren’t about accumulation. They’re about surrender. Surrendering your schedule, your preconceptions, your itch to capture everything in pixels. If you leave feeling lighter, quieter, a bit more attuned to the slow beauty of growth and decay—that’s the win. You don’t need to leave with the Latin name of every ornamental grass. Just a handful of ideas, a few stolen colors, and maybe a renewed sense of possibility.

The best flower shows and garden tours don’t show off—they speak softly, like old friends. They remind you that the act of tending, of noticing, is where the real beauty lives. You don’t need to have a backyard or even a window box to appreciate what they offer. Just bring your attention. Leave your urgency at the gate. Whether you’re watching a bee disappear into a bloom or listening to a stranger explain how they coaxed a clematis to finally bloom, you’re participating in something deeply human. And when the gates close or the sun sets, that quiet wonder comes with you.

Discover the beauty of Colorado’s gardens and enhance your green thumb by visiting the Colorado Federation of Garden Clubs for expert tips, events, and community connections!