Hey everybody and thanks for joining me this Sunday morning. Last week you saw the vlog we did on our sandbox and I don't know if you could tell but I was actually genuinely excited about the way things were coming together and the opportunities that the sandbox is going to give us plus contractors across the world and hopefully more importantly inspiration for you guys. Here's the thing I didn't tell you. The reason I'm so so genuinely excited is because it takes me down memory lane. One of my major passions working here at AquaScape was the opportunity to build something at the Chicago Flowering Garden Show and the reason I loved the Chicago Flowering Garden Show so much was because I was never restricted on any type of design. I could come up with anything I wanted. Nobody said you could or could not do this so I always pushed myself in my imagination as far as I possibly could. The other reason I liked it was not just because I got to stretch my imagination but it kind of knocked the dust off of our boots. We're definitely a seasonal company working out here in Chicago and come early December late December we stopped building and we don't pick back up again usually until about May after our spring cleanouts in April. So the Flowering Garden Show allowed us the opportunity to actually jump into the season knock off the dust off the boots, get everybody pumped for the season, inspired for what was about to come and so now after a couple years of not doing the Flowering Garden Show I get to do that again. I thought I'd take you guys back down memory lane with me and look at some of those memorable moments from the Flowering Garden Show. I'm Brian and I'm Ed and we work for AquaScape Designs. The largest water feature in this water, uh, water feature design. Have you a good dream and we can build it? So in 2010 we built probably the largest booth the Flowering Garden Show has ever seen. It was a 195 feet by I think it was like 85 or 95 feet wide to give you perspective of size. This booth over here is about 40 by 60 and the thing I remember most about that 2010 booth was that it almost killed us. That was a huge undertaking to build something in a booth space that big in eight days. It really pushed us to what we knew our limits were. So once we built that we knew we could do almost anything. Long as it was in a smaller booth, the dramatic change on that booth was pretty epic. You know we had a 100 foot some stream in there, we built a pond very similar to the one that I personally live with with a vanishing edge and the rainwater harvesting system and so it was a huge undertaking. The following year we decided to dump it down a little bit and we went back to basics. Remember if 2008 the academy had changed so people weren't buying big giant water features and stuff. We really wanted to showcase some smaller water features but what I remember most about the 2011 booth was the sunken patio and this is where I started getting excited because we had never done the sunken patios before and to try to do sunken patios for customers now I would have had nearly the confidence design it or take out a project like that and let's say practice that the flower and garden show. So the flower and garden show actually allowed us to practice a lot and experiment on ourselves or with ourselves rather when we're paying customers. So that booth was pretty incredible. I also started really paying attention to maybe the psychology and how people interact with ponds. When you build these big giant displays you get to watch thousands. In fact I think it's someplace around 60,000 people come through and how do they interact with it and so we coined the term fish feeding rock back then and we watched everybody walk up to this one destination fish feeding rock to feed the fish and then we really started incorporating that into a lot of our designs. Let's jump ahead to 2012. Now 2012 the main reason it was memorable to me. One term the tree pergola. We had this vision. We wanted to build a pergola. I wanted to do something different with a pergola and I remember driving home one day and a storm had come through and knocked over a bunch of trees. In fact it was a little microburst tornado and it knocked over a bunch of trees and I thought to myself how awesome would it be to save the root flares of those things for driftwood type pieces and unique things inside of a pond and then as I imagine I just started going a little further I said what if we could save the whole tree and create a pergola out of that and so we created a tree pergola where part of it actually went inside of the pond. We also had some really unique features in there. We had like a timber wall that gave us some privacy. We had designed a little shed and actually had a mason come out and these are the extences we went to to create realistic displays but we actually had a mason come out do a stone veneer on our shed and then we put a grass roof on top of it and little secret to you guys. The whole purpose of that shed was just a place where we could store literature and our coats but we needed a place to put that stuff so I designed it right in the middle of the booth. It was a serious attention getter. We also put in a bubbling rock that disappeared into a permeable patio so we learned how that water when it hits a patio how it migrates through those permeable joints into a patio. I also remember having some co-stone cut us a countertop and put a little bowl in it where the bowl actually vanished over the side so check that out. The most important thing I remember about that entire booth is we were able to sell the entire booth to a single customer. He wanted the tree pergola he wanted the shed he wanted that water table he wanted everything he basically wanted us to take that thing pick it up and put it in his yard. So we moved forward to 2013 2013 was the show that kind of made us famous out there. The theme was music in the garden and I took it literal and said what if we could get a piano that actually had water coming out of it and if I could figure out how to get a piano to get water right could I get some trombones or trumpets and created a pretty epic space. Now every year after that we realized that the attention getter was really important so the attention getter was always something out in front of our booth that drew people in. It wasn't necessary realistic because I'll tell you plumbing a grand piano and having water pour out over the keys is that something that we can do for everybody. In fact it's quite challenging but it looked cool and it was extremely memorable after we had built that every year after people were looking for us and what creative thing we were going to come up with next. That year was fantastic. It also had all kinds of other stuff. We did that branch arbor just remember thinking we built that tree pergola the year before and I wanted to do something with an arbor but I figured if we cut a thousand branches down in fact I think it was like 10,000 branches could we build a big arbor as it swept over the doors. So everybody walked through that area we actually suspended branches with fishing lines so it looked like a kind of blue in which was really cool that led you over to our man cave. First time we actually did a destination spot for all the husbands where they kind of hang out chill look at the giant waterfall from inside as you guys know how important that view is you moved around and then you went through an 85 foot long bridge that serpentine back and forth over the pond which was an epic feat because we had to pre-build everything in order to build these giant displays in eight days so much of the construction happened here at our office rather than at Navy Pier over there. Let's go to 2014. So 2014 I think I felt the same courage that I did in 2010 and decided to take out a pretty big booth again. I think after a few years kind of figured out how the show was working how things were running what we were capable of again had improved efficiencies and decided to go with something really big. I don't think we would ever do that again just the same as I felt in 2010 but 2014 nonetheless was pretty memorable. What would be the most memorable part is a giant teahouse. The teahouse was awesome. It was really really cool gave people an unbelievable respect over the pond we got that water to come right up to it but my favorite parts over the size of that pond everything else were the detailed type things we did. We built a really really cool table out of cedar two by four is just sandwiched together water kind of moved through a trough that we put in there disappeared into a pondless reservoir of sort right into the floor. I also remember putting in a bowl with like just a fogger inside of it and just etched it into an existing wall to show people that you don't have to have a giant pond to make a huge statement in your yard. A simple little bowl with water coming over the top as a huge impact as long as it's tastefully done. So there was all kinds of great things we always do like weird structures and stuff we did what we called tree pergolas so they were single post pergolas with more of a branching type structure on top and we kind of spotted them around all over the place with the idea of just making a patio feel a whole lot more intimate but check out that year in fact if you guys want to check out any of these videos for the full duration just type in flowering garden show aquiscape and they'll all be listed in there. So I think we'll wrap it up there maybe I'll take you down memory lane a little bit more some other time but tell me what your favorite part is which booth did you love the best what was the single favorite item you love there more importantly hopefully this gives us a new found inspiration for what we can create in our new sandbox hey guys thanks so much for watching comment share just comment and share just comment and share thank you bye