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Home and garden show offers whiff of spring for winter-weary
By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK
NILES
Piles of snow can be seen along roadways and in parking lots, but it looked like spring inside Eastwood Expo Center.
Daffodils and tulips decorated the entryway and were scattered throughout the building for the 25th annual Nature Stone Mahoning Valley Home and Garden show.
“As soon as people are walking through the door, I see a smile on their face. They feel spring,” said Dominic Baragona, organizer. “It’s been a brutal and rough winter. Once they get in here, it’s as though the hope is back.”
More than 120 exhibitors filled the center Saturday, offering home and garden products such as windows, sheds, sunrooms, Tupperware and playground equipment. Other products, including fudge and salsa, were featured as well.
Bill Winkler of Hermitage, Pa., enjoys attending home-and-garden shows.
“You get all sorts of neat ideas about what you can do around the house, and you can see the new technology,” he said. “There’s all sorts of interesting things here.”
He was particularly interested in a heat tape that keeps gutters from freezing in cold weather.
“I’ve been thinking of trying to do that myself, but I didn’t know how to do it. Now I have somebody I can pay to do it,” Winkler said.
Dolly Anderson and Maxine Painter, both master gardeners, are ready for spring, so they drove from Ashtabula County for the show.
“We needed a little flowers in our life,” said Anderson, of Wayne Township. “We need spring.”
Both have attended the show in the past.
“They always have a nice show here,” Anderson said.
She also likes that it’s free.
She admired a pergola, a garden feature made of vertical posts that usually support cross-beams and an
open lattice, on display. She has plans to make her own.
“This is my ideal, but it’s not going to happen,” she laughed.
The show is nice, agreed Painter, who is from Rome Township.
“It gives you ideas,” she added.
Getting ideas now, Painter said, gives her time to think about making them work before spring arrives.
Gail Meenachan, owner of Applegate Furniture in Canfield, participates in the show regularly.
“It’s an excellent show,” she said.
Applegate, sells storage sheds, play sets, trampolines, basketball hoops and outdoor furniture made of both wood and poly lumber, a product made from recycled milk jugs.
Attendance at the show has been good, she said. “We’ve sold quite a few pieces,” Meenachan said.
The show continues from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. Also included are cooking demonstrations, “how to” seminars and appraisals of antiques and collectibles.