See Hannah’s Award-Winning County Fair Garden

Hannah Eubanks, 25, of Design for Serenity (she's Laura Eubanks’ daughter and protégé), undertook a herculean task: creating a 1,750-square-foot succulent display for the Del Mar Fair Flower Show. Hannah transformed ten motor-home-sized parking places (two adjoining exhibit spaces) into an immense, eye-catching, award-winning garden.

I was there the evening before the Fair opened to attend the Flower Show awards ceremony. Hannah, cheerful as always, said the project "challenged me to my core." You'll see why in the video I made while there...and below.

Before: This parking area was the design space Hannah started with less than a week before the Fair's opening day. Shade cloth had yet to conceal buildings at right or be installed overhead. Yep, that's it.

Where's the exhibit located?

When you enter the Fairgrounds go left to into the Flower Show. Find the big succulent garden on the west side facing the east end of the Bing Crosby Hall, adjacent to the SW corner of O'Brien Hall.

The Del Mar Fair website gives hours, admission, parking info and more. San Diego County's summer Fair, which averages 1.5 million visitors annually, runs through July 4.

"So many awards!"

The energy at this year's Flower Show award ceremony was palpable as Hannah, her sister Alex and friends awaited results. Over the course of the evening, Hannah, on behalf of exhibit sponsor Grangetto's, won five awards!

Fellow designers---who'd become like family---gave a delighted Hannah hugs, high-fives and happy whoops. Parents Laura and Greg Eubanks, away in Northern CA, watched proudly via Alex's texts.

Hannah shows the award the garden received from the American Horticultural Society.

What Hannah accomplished

To understand and appreciate the scope of what San Diego's youngest and brightest succulent garden designer managed to pull off, consider that Hannah…

• did it all on her own during six 10-hour days
• had only occasional hand’s-on help
• moved boulders (ten tons worth, some bathtub-sized) with a rock dolly
• moved dozens of barrel cacti, many weighing more than she does
• coordinated all materials---much of it donated---with nurseries and suppliers
• was given free reign by sponsor Kevin Grangetto of Grangetto’s Farm and Garden Supply
• was invariably cheerful, bubbly, friendly, hardworking and professional (but that’s Hannah).

Above: Bleached and twisted driftwood that Hannah sourced at Waterwise Botanicals suggests a desert tree's skeleton. From a design standpoint, the driftwood adds interest, is in scale with the space, offers contrast of form and a sense of motion, and draws the eye upward.

Links and credits: Who did what

Do support these outstanding businesses---a win-win for both you and them.

• Sponsor: Grangetto's Farm and Garden Supply (more about Grangetto's below)
• Design by: Hannah Eubanks of Design for Serenity (Greg and Laura Eubanks' succulent landscape company)
• Succulent nurseries: Sun Valley (wholesale), Waterwise Botanicals
• Driftwood: Waterwise Botanicals, Bonsall CA
• Rock and flagstone pavers: KRC
• Lighting: Hunter Industries FX Luminaire 
• Pots and Talavera accents: Planter Paradise, El Cajon
• Raised vegetable beds, trellis, annual flowers: Grangetto's

Details of the display

Do see the video to hear Hannah on how she tackled all this:

• • Square footage: 1,750
  • Boulders: 10 tons
  • Gravel topdressing: 6 yards
  • Soil: 10 yards

Raised beds (upper right) are among garden accessories available at Grangetto's. Pots and a Talavera orb are from Planter Paradise in El Cajon. Crushed rock topdressing from KRC is "chamois beige."

About the Exhibit's sponsor: Grangetto's Farm & Garden Supply

The goal of Grangetto's first-ever Del Mar Flower Show display is to let homeowners know that the company welcomes and serves residential customers. “Seventy percent of our business is now retail,” owner Kevin Grangetto told a KUSI-TV business reporter the day the Fair opened. He added that when his father founded the business in 1952, Grangetto's was primarily an agricultural supplier.

Hannah Eubanks and Kevin Grangetto on KUSI News 

A name long respected in San Diego's farm and gardening communities, Grangetto's has locations in Encinitas, Escondido, Valley Center and Fallbrook. The staff is friendly and helpful. For 30+ years, I've consulted Grangetto's helpful staff about garden supplies, just as my dad did decades earlier for the avocado ranch I grew up on.

Kevin told the KUSI reporter that Grangetto's offers “everything you need to grow plants: irrigation, fertilizer, tools and more. Everything but the plants, literally." Not surprisingly, Grangetto's has a symbiotic relationship with nurseries, which---as Kevin noted--- "Hannah sourced to create a beautiful display.”

 Watch Kevin Grangetto and Hannah Eubanks on KUSI.