ATTLEBORO -- With its ninth annual flower show, the Attleboro Museum, Center for the Arts, will once again offer snowweary area residents an early glimpse of spring. But this year, the museum is also throwing a party. It's a `` Garden Party'' -- the theme for the 2005 flower show which opened Wednesday -- and everyone is invited to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of the museum at its 86 Park St. location downtown. It's all part of year-long festivities for the museum, running through May.

`` Everybody in the flower show this year joins in with the celebration in some creative way,'' said Museum Executive Director Dore VanDyke. `` I'm really impressed with all of the individuals who have come forward this year with some very diverse ways of expressing `party.'

`` We're going to have a very festive and very happy place to come, and that, to me, is the purpose of this year's show and the idea of the garden party concept. I think each of the designers of each of the garden displays has truly in many ways challenged the concept and truly come forward with a unique presentation.''

Among those who will contribute to the party atmosphere with their landscape designs are two first-time exhibitors of the museum's flower show -- Richard Kattmann and Tranquil Water Gardens.

The lady and the dancer Kattman, a landscape architect, artist and photographer from Holliston, has created a whimsical garden featuring two paper mache figures sculpted by Holliston artist Georgia Giscone.

As described by Kattman one of the figures is `` a billowing garden lady wearing a multicolored flowery blouse and blue apron with sunglasses, a straw hat and red handbag. The other, a comical young Degas, like `Little Dancer' dressed in pink tutu, is spinning a pirouette.''

The humorous characters occupy a small formal garden filled with tulips, hydrangeas and amaryllis offering a color scheme of pink, red, blue and white.

The flowers are equally arranged in four quadrant flower beds, enhanced with narrow strips of grass. The garden is bordered on the sides and rear with a 4-foot high holly hedge and in front with a row of grass.

Two bluebird boxes on poles add height for emphasis in the rear, while a floral painting hanging above and done by Kattman complements all the colors of the garden.

As for the garden party theme of the exhibit, Kattman says the two characters can be interpreted as either having their own party or apparently awaiting the arrival of guests as the garden blazes away.

Feng shui in the garden

Tranquil Water Gardens, based in Cumberland, R.I., and owned by Craig Marciniak, offers an Asian garden party theme, featuring a pondless waterfall and Asian type plantings.

Waterfalls that don't empty into a pond are becoming very popular, according to Marciniak. `` It gives you the beauty of the waterfalls -- the sound, the sight, the visual -- and no maintenance at all,'' Marciniak said.

In this particular exhibit, Marciniak says the water is symbolic of energy coming out of the waterfall into the pondless area, which is a dry steam, with the water fingering out towards a walkway. Noting that feng shui is also very popular right now, Marciniak said the garden party theme will be set up in an area where the dry stream transitions into the walkway.

The exhibit also offers a diamond-shaped piece of latticework set into a wall of bamboo through which visitors can view the exhibit from outside as well as enjoy it as a backdrop from inside.

Plantings in the exhibit include a 14-foot weeping Norway spruce, a 6-foot Japanese white pine, with pinecones, bamboo, variegated and regular mugho pines, five-star junipers, pink and purple foxglove, and variegated ivy.

There is a variety of stone as well, including peastone, fieldstone, Asian washed river stone, with cobblestones used for some of the borders.

King of the courtyard

Participating in the flower show for the second year, A.N. Johnson Landscape & Construction of North Attleboro, owned by Andy Johnson, is offering a courtyard garden party.

The courtyard not only adds to the aesthetics of the show, but extends the space of the show's annual Secret Garden Cafe, with a walkway that blends into the luncheon area.

In addition, the courtyard offers small wrought iron tables and chairs as well as stonewall space for seating.

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Specializing in courtyards, Johnson says that creating such wall space is very popular for increasing the seating area of small backyard spaces.

The courtyard also features a patio made of pavers, a trellis, flanked with stone pillars, and a variety of plantings, including yellow daffodils and red tulips.

Backyard bash

Veteran Flower Show exhibitors, the Attleboro High School Landscape and Greenhouse Program, headed this year by Gerry Laferriere, will display their garden party in a backyard setting.

The setting features the facade of a house built by AHS carpentry students and painted by students from the landscape and greenhouse program, complete with colorful windows that offer the look of stained glass.

The exhibit features a wood border, which the students in the landscape and greenhouse program have painted to look like a stone wall.

The exhibit also features a walkway and patio, and using a bit of artistic leeway, according to Laferriere, there will be plantings not usually found in a backyard garden, such as a hedge of palm trees.

Teddy bear's birthday

Flowers by the Station of Attleboro, which usually offers a formal setting for its flower show exhibit, is offering a whimsical children's birthday party, set in a backyard garden space.

The exhibit offers a birthday cake, with a flower topper, on a round table, where teddy bears are seated, and ice cream soda arrangements of white carnations, with roses on top for the cherries on another table.

There are also plants and floral arrangements in pinks and purples, a toy trunk, gift-wrapped boxes and a balloon backdrop.

Tea time

Nolan's Flowers and Gifts of North Attleboro, also veteran exhibitors of the show, is offering a tea party in a garden setting.

Daffodils and green foliage line the exhibit, which features a tea setting on a linen-topped table and other colorful springtime flowers.

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Briggs Nursery of North Attleboro, also longtime exhibitors of the show, has veered away from the sprintime display, however, and is offering the more unusual plantings.

These plantings include orange citrus, orange-flowering clivia and succulents, such as agave, all of which are set in a garden space typical of a small terrace or entryway space found in California.

Janette Sears can be reached by phone or fax at 508-222-2442 or by e-mail at jsears(at)(at)thesunchronicle.com.