With the Fall Cottage Life Show and Season Christmas Show set for November 11 to 13 at the International Centre in Mississauga, Bradford’s own Frank “Frankie Flowers” Ferragine will be making presentations at both shows.
On Nov. 11, Ferragine will host an interactive demonstration that will share gardening and landscape trends at the Cottage Life Show.
“We’re going to talk a little bit about getting your garden ready, not only for the upcoming winter but also planning for spring,” said Ferragine. “Fall’s a really good time to assess your garden that you’ve had during the summer season—successes, losses—and trying to build a plan for the next season. It’s also about learning how to protect plants. A lot of the times, even in Bradford and surrounding areas, we have things like rabbits and deer that come and munch away. So, I’ll be giving tips and tricks on helping people with that.”
At the Seasons Christmas Show on Nov. 12, Ferragine will be showcasing his favourite live plants to decorate your home with for the holidays.
“I’ll be focusing mostly on the outdoors and creating that entrance way for you using things like Christmas greens,” he said. “The Christmas greens you could go purchase or even harvest yourself from some of the spruce trees. Then, I’ll go over how to put them together and assemble them, so you look like you’re the Martha Stewart of your neighbourhood, or the Frankie Flowers.”
With winter approaching, Ferragine says, it’s the perfect time to make an effort to bring more plants inside your home.
“Before the snow flies, you can always be planting spring flower bulbs or be planting garlic,” he explained. “If it’s the winter, it’s actually one of the best times that you can be pruning a lot of your mature trees.
“The winter months are also a time to be thinking about what you want to do indoors. Incorporating plants inside your home is really good because it increases humidity in the home, but also, the sight of green can make you feel more invigorated. Studies have shown that seeing green and being around plants releases serotonin and serotonin is what makes you feel good.”
Decorating with live plants for the holidays has been a growing trend according to Ferragine who says its popularity grows each year.
“Now the question is with interest rates going up and the cost of living going up, how can we do this creatively? What can we use from around our natural landscapes? And how can we decorate our homes with things that already exist by changing up a look but still making it look fresh? Those are the things I’m going to be focusing on,” he said. “We’ve had so much bleak news and we need things to make us happy and things to brighten our day. How can we do that in a way that’s not going to bust the budget? That’s my focus.”
Ferragine himself is already thinking ahead for what he’s planning to do this holiday season when it comes to decorating and he’s excited to share those ideas at the show.
“I always love doing a little combination of using different evergreens and mixing textures together—white spruce, balsam fir, and cedar—and then putting a couple natural pinecones within there and then putting a red bow or red balls,” he said. “I always like red and green for Christmas, this year I’m thinking a little more gold. Indoors, there’s the natural poinsettia—the world’s best-selling potted plant of all-time. We can use our poinsettias but also, we can use our rosemary trees. If you want flowers indoors decorated in a Christmas theme, there’s nothing better than the value of an orchid.”
For Ferragine, he finds doing these types of shows rewarding because he gets to share his expertise while motivating people to grow plants.
“My whole goal is to try and get people to grow something in their life,” he said. “I really feel that gardening and being creative and being around plants has such mental health benefits. It’s a physical outdoor leisure activity in the summer, but even in the winter being around plants, dealing with plants, and having something that’s living inside our home is something that gives you unlimited benefit and purpose. If we can show a child how to grow something, they’ll look at it every day and touch and feel it. It’s something physical we all need.”
The Fall Cottage Life Show will run concurrently with the Seasons Christmas Show, offering guests access to both shows for the price of one admission. Tickets are available now at shows.cottagelife.com.
