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Special Display at Portland Home & Garden Show to Benefit New Orleans’s Gardens
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A frequent visitor to New Orleans, Gail Dresner, a landscape designer and member of the Oregon Chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), felt deep empathy for the people affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Wanting to help, she focused on New Orleans City Park, the over-150-year-old urban park of New Orleans, which had sustained extensive damage from Katrina.

As lead designer for an APLD team that installs a floor display at the Portland Home & Garden Show, Dresner says, “I contacted the New Orleans Botanical Society and ran the idea by them of doing a garden display modeled on New Orleans’ gardens. They agreed enthusiastically.”



After further brainstorming, Dresner decided that the APLD garden installation should be modeled on the New Orleans’ French Quarter’s walled courtyard gardens. “New Orleans City Park isn’t quite as conducive to a show,” she says, explaining the process of choosing her theme. While she still wanted the garden display to raise awareness and funds for the Park, she says “a French Quarter garden built on hardscape and surrounded by walls is ideal for a show format.”

Dresner, who is well informed of the history behind these gardens—a history that dates back to the early 18th century—enjoyed the challenge of “replicating as authentic a French Quarter garden as possible.” The garden display is titled the “Resurrection Garden,” after the resurrection fern (Polypodium polypodioides), a plant that opens only after rain, thus symbolizing regeneration and hope. Visitors to the APLD display will have the opportunity to make a donation, which will be given to the New Orleans Botanical Society for the renovation and rebuilding of the city’s gardens.

The Portand Home & Garden Show will run from February 22-26, 2006. For more information about the show, please visit http://www.oloughlintradeshows.com/ots-shows-hg-pdx.html. AHS members showing a valid membership card are entitled to free admission to the show.


Written by Editorial Intern William Clattenburg.

Photograph by Nathan Williams of French Quarter garden at the Place d'Armes Hotel is courtesy of FrenchQuarter.com.