Last year's award winning Washington Park Arboretum Foundation garden, designed by Brad Pugh had a woodland theme. This year's design will feature fragrant plants in a winter garden.

THIRTEEN is going to be a lucky number for the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. Despite the fact that next year's show will expand along with the Convention Center, founder Duane Kelly decided that his 13th annual show needed a fresh infusion of creativity. So for those of you grown blase about this extravaganza, lapsing into a visit only every second or third year, this is one you won't want to miss.

"I learned a lesson last year," says Kelly. "Attendance was down by 10 percent, so we did some research." He concluded that the whole show needed a transformation in look and feel each and every year, hence the extensive renovations for 2001. "We're responding to what customers tell us, and they want change."

We wouldn't be good gardeners if we didn't long for the new and the ever-changing.

"New Paths," the theme of the 2001 show, is more than metaphoric. The garden area will appear more open, with the gardens accessible from many different viewpoints. We all know it is easy to make a garden look good from a single angle, so it will be fun to see how the designers deal with the challenge of having show-goers moving through the gardens and seeing them from all sides.

The roominess will continue with a transition zone between the gardens and the traditional marketplace that will house a whole new class of exhibit, open on all sides ("no pipe or drape," explains Kelly). In this hybrid space between show gardens and commercial booths, exhibitors will lure us with theatrically lit displays.

Kelly went to England's Chelsea Show in May and was impressed by the Royal Horticultural Society's method of garden judging. In the past, Seattle gardens have been awarded prizes in certain categories, such as "Pacific Rim" and "Urban Horticulture," which always seemed a bit arbitrary.

Now In Bloom Skimmia japonica 'Rubella' is a compact shrub for shade and moist soil with evergreen leaves trimmed in red. It is a male, so won't have berries, but it more than compensates with large, dark-red flower buds that stay on the plant from November until they open to fragrant white flowers in early spring.

This year fewer and fairer awards will be given in a system that follows the British model. Garden creators will be judged by how well their garden satisfies their own design objectives, as expressed in their statements of intent (to be published next week as part of the official show program). Exhibitors have a chance for a gold, silver, bronze or crystal medal based on how well they reach their own goals, rather than by competing with other gardens. Maybe such a judging system will nudge all of us to consider how well we are accomplishing what we set out to do in our own gardens.

The spirit of innovation seems to have infused the theater of garden displays as well. A Sichuan-style garden with a bamboo wall and plantings of pine and plum will provide a preview of the new Chinese garden being built in West Seattle. University of Washington Landscape Architecture students are contributing a healing garden designed for quiet and solitude. This year's Washington Park Arboretum Garden will be true to the season, created by the talented folk at Fremont Gardens. A warm color palette will show us how to take advantage of limited light, while texture and fragrance ensure the garden's sensuality even in midwinter.

Just taking a look at the designers involved tells me I'd better bring along a notebook to write down plant names. Ravenna Gardens and Piriformis Nursery are both making gardens, and Alex LaVilla of Swanson's Nursery has designed three distinct urban sanctuaries: a tree grove, an herb garden and a place for kids to play.

And who could resist this from Dean Backholm? "Deep purple falls. Cabernet, chocolate, eggplant and mahogany are colors . . . the garden does not rest, it resonates." Backholm has designed a dark and moody garden, lit with an effervescence he describes as "Alka Seltzer in cocoa," with the feel of fog, the smell of the receding tide.

"I grew up in Aberdeen - I know dark," Backholm says of his garden made from hardwoods, hues between blue and orange and a sense of life about to blossom.

For information call the show hotline at 1-800-229-6311, or visit the Web site at www.gardenshow.com.

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. She is the co-author of "Artists in their Gardens," due next month from Sasquatch Books. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com