On March 20 at 7:41 a.m., Tualatin nursery, The Garden Corner, celebrated spring by unveiling a new design for the world’s largest hanging basket.
The Spring Equinox commemoration was populated by a small crowd, a TV news team and Garden Corner owner Jonn Karsseboom, who was dressed as a ringmaster.
“Step right up and welcome to a morning where the circus meets the garden,” Karsseboom said during the unveiling of the three-ton monument. “Today the greatest show isn’t something you watch, it’s something that has grown patiently and beautifully right before your eyes.”
In addition to the basket, the garden center was decked out with banners and big signs with bold letters that read “The Greatest Show on Earth!” Karsseboom said the corner’s circus theme would be the nursery’s new aesthetic until next winter’s Tualatin Light Parades.
“This year we decided circus is going to be our theme, and from that we decided circus was going to be our year-round theme,” Karsseboom said. “Next year’s theme gets introduced at the Tualatin parade.”
This year’s hanging basket cradled two large sasquatch statues dressed in red and gold circus garb and holding hula hoops to signify the garden’s ode to the big top.
Karsseboom said he originally dreamt up the idea for the hanging basket with ironworks associate Don Sprague in 2012 and has since held the world’s largest hanging basket ceremonies sporadically. Last year’s celebration (tinyurl.com/26393e3s) commemorated the store’s 25th anniversary.
“First Don was saying, ‘you’re crazy,’” Karsseboom said. “He didn’t know if we were serious about it, and then I said, ‘No, Don, I think we can build the world’s largest hanging basket.’”
Karsseboom said that soon after unleashing the basket on Tualatin in 2012, he checked with Guinness World Records to make sure Garden Corner’s was in fact the largest.
“Technically, we aren’t,” Karsseboom said and explained that although Guinness World Records verified that The Garden Corner currently boasts the largest basket in the world, a Belgian basket from 2000 that weighed in at over 99,000 pounds was the biggest on record.
“The hanging basket is never about us; it represents the gardeners of the Pacific Northwest,” Karsseboom said, explaining that he hoped to one day expand the spectacle to every season. “We’ll be doing it in the springtime, and then hopefully summer and fall, and I even have dreams of doing it in the dark days of winter.”
The Garden Corner is located at 21550 SW 108th Ave, Tualatin, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.thegardencorner.com.
