RIDGEFIELD — After what felt like weeks of continuous rain, Lenny Severs was excited to see the sun sneak out in recent days, because that meant she could get back to planting. “I don’t have a green thumb,” Severs of Camas said. “The things I plant don’t stay alive from year to year, but every year, I keep planting. I was cleaning out the yard recently and taking some leaves off flowers, and this one flower was absolutely dead and the whole thing just ripped right out of the dirt. It was disgusting.”
Severs said the rain did make it easy to clear out her yard. She’s ready to start planting this year, and on Saturday, rolled around a wood-paneled wagon full of plants she purchased at the 26th annual Clark Public Utilities Home and Garden Idea Fair, held at the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds, 17402 N.E. Delfel Road, Ridgefield.
Severs’ haul included a Japanese maple tree, trailing plants and tomato plants. Now all she needs is an opening to plant them.
At this stage of spring, gardeners need to be optimistic, said Jacki Johnson, owner of Jacki’s Heirloom Garden in Ridgefield, one of 40-plus local vendors selling plants and flowers at the fair.
“Eventually, it all dries up and we’ll get some sun again,” Johnson said.
This was her 10th year as a vendor at the fair, and she brought along starter plants, perennials, heirlooms and tomatoes. The heavy rain has delayed her tomato planting, Johnson said, but a lot of her heirlooms stayed outside and survived the winter.
“They will live on in spite of us,” she said. “They’re hardy little plants.”
Johnson mostly sells her plants throughout the year at farmers markets and other events like the fair. Twice a year she hosts a plant sale on her property in Ridgefield. She said she likes the fair because it gives her a chance to walk around and see what the other vendors are offering.
On Saturday, the building across from the Exhibition Hall was lined with local vendors offering an array of plants, flowers and garden art.
The Exhibition Hall housed most of the home vendors at the event, with booths offering up ideas for various home projects, including roofing, cabinets and bathrooms. One side of the hall had kids activities, where children could make birdfeeders out of pine cones and plant a flower.
On the opposite end of the hall was the Landscape Showcase, in which local vendors showed off some different ways to design a backyard space, from simplicity through rock work and a paved patio to mixing natural stone and local plants with water features.
One of the vendors who saw a steady stream of visitors on Saturday was Patrick Sughrue, general manager of Artisan Tiny House based in Vancouver. His “booth” was inside a 200-square-foot tiny home, with 160 square feet on the main floor and 40 square feet in a loft for a sleeping area. His company provides kits for people to put together their own tiny home, Sughrue said. The 200-square-foot home is about 20 feet long, which is mid-sized for Sughrue’s company. He said the company offers homes as low as 16 feet long to as big as 36 feet. The 20-foot kit costs about $15,000, Sughrue said.
Sughrue has been coming to the fair with his tiny homes for a few years, and he’s seen the trend take off even more recently, although he built and lived in his first tiny home in 1972.
“I’m an old hippie,” he said. “I built it in the back of my flatbed truck.”
Most of the people interested in tiny homes are younger, Sughrue said, as they haven’t acquired a lifetime of stuff to get rid of first.
“People like the freedom of them,” he said. “They like getting rid of their junk. Less stuff, more life.”
While people filed in and out of Sughrue’s tiny home Saturday afternoon, he had a similar message for them.
“Simple is good,” he said. “Less is more.”
