Award-winning fairy garden, lots of free events at 2024 Point Defiance garden festival

Many gardening aficionados travel near and far to visit horticultural oases. Lately, it’s been Landen Moore’s fairy garden that has been doing the traveling.

The winner of best in show at Seattle’s Northwest Flower and Garden Festival in February was packed up and taken back to the garden designer’s Tumwater base. This week, Moore has been installing the collection of stumps, rocks, plants, water features and fairy homes at Tacoma’s premier park, just in time for this weekend’s Point Defiance Flower and Garden Festival, June 1-2.

This time, it’s staying put.

Although the fairy garden and another giant chess board garden he’s making are being installed for the two-day event, they will become permanent features of the park, according to Metro Parks horticultural services manager Ross Wilton.

Free experiences

Unlike Seattle, the Point Defiance show is outdoors and offers plenty of free aspects. Most prominent are the display gardens.

“It’s just a way to brighten people’s day, kids or adults,” Moore said while his crew was installing doors and pathways only a Lilliputian could use.

When they’re done, Moore estimates they will have put in 300 man hours and placed 20 tons of granite rock.

Along with the new and existing gardens to stroll through, festival goers also can access vendors, including several nurseries, and food trucks.

Garden guru Ciscoe Morris kicks off the weekend at 12:45 p.m. Saturday on the free stage, followed by a weekend of entertainment.

Lectures and tours

Tickets are required for festival wine/beer/food events and some workshops. They’re also needed for two days’ worth of horticulture lectures and tours.

Lecture subjects include native plants, arbors, roses, container plants and others. Tours will visit the rose and Japanese gardens with horticultural experts.

Make-and-take workshops will produce horticultural-themed creations.

History

The last Point Defiance flower and garden festival was held in 2007 before restarting in 2023.

Wilton said future iterations of the festival will add one or two permanent display gardens a year between the pagoda and current gardens. The goal is to move slowly and fill gaps without turning the area into a garden circus.

“We’re trying to create an area where the community can see nice gardens being built and view nice gardens,” he said.

Wilton, who grew up in England, said the festival is a chance for the public to increase its horticultural knowledge. But, he emphasized, it’s also an opportunity just to stroll through Point Defiance’s public gardens.

“I think humans just like to promenade,” Wilton said, momentarily lapsing into a British vocabulary before switching back to an American vernacular. “They like to strut their stuff.”

If you go

What: Point Defiance Flower and Garden Festival

When: 11 a.m.-6 p.m., June 1-2

Where: Point Defiance Park, near main entrance, 5400 N. Pearl Street, Tacoma.

Tickets: Display gardens and entertainment are free. Tickets can be purchased for lectures ($15), tours ($18) and other events.

Information: metroparkstacoma.org/ptdflowergardenfest/