By Joy Kraft
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Juan Medina, who works for Sandstone Gardens out of Joplin, Mo., runs an errand past a batch of tulips Tuesday at Coney Island, site of the annual Cincinnati Flower Show, which starts today. The Cincinnati Enquirer/STEVEN M. HERPPICH

This display at the Cincinnati Flower Show, "Claude Monet's Gardens at Giverny," produced by Midwest Landscape Network and Flower Framers, will knock your garden gloves off.

After 15 years, visitors to the Cincinnati Flower Show can count on two things: fickle spring weather and dazzling floral displays - so dazzling that they have earned the show the only thumbs-up in North America from the very picky Royal Horticultural Society.

This year is no exception.

As the five-day show opens today at Coney Island under threatening skies, the major displays in the main tent, called the Grand Marquee, are a passport to other worlds - from re-creations of artist Claude Monet's gardens at Giverny in northern France to English and Scottish castle ruins.

There's an enchanted miniature fairy garden and chugging trains running through a nursery-rhyme garden guarded by a 30-foot-long fire-breathing dragon.

There's something for green thumbs of every size, window-box gardeners to backyard landscapers, with more to see, more to buy, more to learn from the experts on hand.

In honor of this year's anniversary, here are 15 things you should see (or do) at this year's show:

• Chase the ducks out of Thin Air Studio's rambling twig maze sculpture, by artists Christopher Daniel, Kirk Mayhew and Rich Fruth, at the show's south entry ... an engineering amazement.

• The 30-foot-long ivy dragon breathing red impatiens flames guards "A Wizard's Garden," where trains rumble through nursery-rhyme vignettes (Grand Marquee).

FLOWER SHOW GUIDE

Today's coverage: • Flower show's new roots • Nature gives an encore • Flower Show schedule Previous stories: • Flower Show: 15th year Gala From CiN Weekly: • Flower Show preview

• Watch for the caladium-munching giant caterpillar made from tractor and other farm machinery parts by Northern Kentucky University student Craig Schmidt (Grand Marquee).

• The foxglove forest in whisper-soft pastels in front of the Giverny cottage will knock off your gardening gloves. Monet couldn't have picked a better palette. And don't skip the urns to either side packed with astilbe, peonies, iris, ferns, hydrangea, delphinium and dripping streams of amaranth. (Grand Marquee).

• A chandelier made of pussy willow branches actually works in the Fairy Garden, by Gnomenculture Inc. (Grand Marquee).

• Look closely for the tiniest flower arrangement in the show, no more than 3 inches high, by Jeannette Hagerman of Finneytown (a blue-ribbon winner), part of the Finland/Iceland exhibit in the Amateur Flower Show space.

• The rattlesnake poised to strike - made of ivy scales and seeds -- in the Professional Floristry tent.

• Life-size horses of straw with pine-needle manes, complete with harnesses and pulling a wagon, by Annette Skinner, in the Professional Floristry tent.

• Container gardens along Lake Como show what you can do with a few plants and household discards - from Jeff Bossman's golf-bag planters to old chairs, antique stoves and barbecue grills turned into planters.

• The Dramatic Table Settings tent is dominated by Hyde Park florist Dennis Buttelwerth's towering arrangement of blue hydrangea, French tulips, Hawthorn branches and orchids in an antique urn atop a glorious table set with Tiffany's best.

• Don't leave the Table Settings tent without a peek at Keith Mueller's coconut halves with floating orchids and the light-hearted Nemo table.

• The Camargo Trading Co.'s pink and green room in the Splendid Spaces tent makes you want to pull up a comfy chair under the spectacular chandelier by Scott Atkinson that's dripping with mini-lamps and waves of pink and white tulips.

• Visit the window boxes outside Moonlite Gardens and steal some inspiration, especially from the Terrace Park Garden Club's work.

• The hanging baskets, stuffed with colorful blooms by the Olde Garden Shack in Batesville, will sell quickly (Plant Market).

• Ha'iku Maui Orchids Inc. develops orchids "to take a lot of abuse" and pledges that even failed green thumbs can grow them. They'll tempt you. (Plant Market; also displayed in Grand Marquee)

E-mail jkraft@enquirer.com