Find out what to grow in the Rocky Mountain region at the 51st annual Colorado Garden & Home Show, Road Trips Gardeners. It’s open February 13-21, 2010, at the Colorado Convention Center, 700 14th Street, Denver, Colorado. Tickets are $12 at the door. Theme for the Entry Garden is “Mammoths, Tigers and Flowers…Oh My!” A somewhat surrealistic motif, it’s supposed to help gardeners experience the last days of the final ice age with the giant sloth, glyptodon, saber tooth tiger and wooly mammoth “as their world of winter white gives way to the sounds of rushing streams and the color of a lush landscape and a new world”. Other gardens highlight everything from water features (providing the sounds and sights of cascading water) to the “Wild Wild West” (where a beaver dam and trout pond recall earlier days in Colorado).

The educational seminars and how-to clinics, included in the price of admission, are held in the Demonstration Theater. A couple of the intriguing options are Pet Friendly Landscaping and New Plants for 2010. Headline presenter during the show is Michael Weishan, host of The Victory Garden on PBS and The Cultivated Gardener on NPR. He is the author of The New Traditional Garden, From a Victorian Garden and The Victory Garden Companion.

The show is sponsored by Colorado Garden Show, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides funds for horticultural-related grants and scholarships for the benefit of the greater Denver area and the state of Colorado.