San Francisco Flower & Garden Show

San Francisco Flower & Garden Show

The San Francisco Flower & Garden Show is an annual public show serving the northern California, USA region. Attendance ranges from 40,000 - 60,000. The show is five days long, running Wednesday through Sunday, and is typically held in March. The show consists of three main components: approximately 25 display gardens ranging from 500 to 1,500 sq. ft. in size, vendors promoting and selling garden-related products, and free seminars. Seminar speakers include garden and design experts from the U.S. East Coast and from Britain.

The show was started in 1986 as the San Francisco Landscape Garden Show by volunteers for the Friends of Recreation and Parks in San Francisco as a fundraiser for that organization (in 2006 the organization’s name changed to San Francisco Parks Trust). The first show featured a tribute garden to San Francisco landscape architect, Thomas Dolliver Church (1902-1978), designed by Pam-Anela Messenger. For its first eleven years (1986-1997) the show held at Ft. Mason in San Francisco, and for the next eleven years (1998-2008) it was held at the Cow Palace. After the 2008 show, the venue was changed to the San Mateo Event Center in 2009.

In 1997 Salmon Bay Events, the Seattle-based company owned by Duane and Alice Kelly that had started the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, acquired the San Francisco Landscape Garden Show, changed its name to the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, and moved the show from Ft. Mason to the Cow Palace.

Two large flower shows that preceded the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show in northern California were the Oakland Spring Flower Show which was produced by the California Association of Nurserymen from 1930 to 1978 (with a three-year hiatus from 1943 to 1945 because of World War II). In the early 1980s the rock ‘n roll impresario Bill Graham produced two annual flower shows at the Cow Palace.

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