Brian Minter is coming to town and one of British Columbia's most renowned gardening experts wants to get people excited about plants.
Minter will be the keynote speaker at the Squamish Gardeners' Club event at the Eagle Eye Theatre on Feb. 20. He said the gardening industry is experiencing massive changes, changes he wants to be at the forefront of.
"There's been a demographic shift of the Boomer generation who are now downsizing into condos and travelling more," he said. "We've got Generation X right behind who lead very busy lifestyles and then Generation Y right behind them who are very technologically oriented and not plant-oriented. We haven't adapted as an industry and need to break the mould of what we've been doing."
His talk, titled "Taking Your Garden to the Next Level," aims to inspire new gardeners and re-invigorate the veterans.
"I don't even like the word 'gardening' because it doesn't imply inspiration or fun or enjoyment," he said. "My whole thing is let's break that way of thinking. It's done, let's move on."
Minter said food gardening has brought the industry back into the public eye and it's a topic he plans to focus on in his talk.
"Food gardening has given us some relevance," he said. "But we're not really putting plants into the ground anymore, we're putting them in pots, we're creating art. I want to talk about making the experience more sensory and doing what you can with what is sometimes a small space.
"I always remember going to Japan and seeing the small gardens there and how amazing they looked simply because of how they designed it. We need privacy and sensory and to combine them in a way that takes us to another level.
"It's not about doing the same old things, it's about new flavours, new colours, new fragrances and introducing this whole world to help make gardening relevant again."
He added that he wants people to leave his talk with a new perspective on how to make their gardens work.
"If you walk away from this talk and not have a completely new concept or new ideas about what you can do with your garden, it's a failure," he said. "We've let plants and gardening slip away in recent years but we have everything people need in their lives. We can't live without plants and there is all the scientific documentation that people live and feel better with plants around."
Tickets are $15 and include admission to a plant sale which starts at 6:30 p.m. Minter is expected to hit the stage at 7 p.m. Tickets will be available at the door or advance tickets can be found at Anna's Attic, Billie's Flower House and the Squamish Adventure Centre.
