KINGSTON — Orchestrating a garden show for more than 400 5- to 10-year-old exhibitors on a school day is no easy task. Then again, neither is achieving a quarter century of service to North Kitsap’s youth.

Organizers of the Blanche Gray Garden Show — the Kingston Garden Club — routinely accomplish the former and will mark the latter with their upcoming shows at Gordon and Wolfle elementary schools Sept. 14 and 21, respectively.

Students from each school will display the products of their summer green thumbs during the all-day events at their schools. Each entry will be judged and awarded a participatory ribbon while 100 prize ribbons will be doled out in addition to two grand prizes.

And though students’ eyes may be fixed on the prizes, event coordinator Ann Ingham’s thoughts are focused on the show’s significance.

“I think it is just fabulous for kids to learn that they can have dirty fingernails and watch something grow,” said Ingham who is entering her second year as coordinator for the show. “There is nothing more magic than planting a seed and watching it grow.”

During the spring of last school year, the KGC distributed seed packets — courtesy of the Burpee Seed Company — for each student enrolled in either Gordon or Wolfle with the hopes of students planting and caring for their organisms over the course of the summer. Last year’s show brought in everything from sunflowers and giant zucchini, to a pumpkin that had to be wheeled in on a dolly, Ingham said.

“I was terribly impressed that a garden club had a way of educating and involving young people in local flora,” Ingham said. “With the way the garden show is structured … it’s a way for the whole family to participate.”

Plant exhibits will be set up in the schools’ multi-purpose rooms and housed throughout the day for observers to see. Parents and community members will need to follow the normal school-visit procedure of checking into the main office before heading to the multi-purpose room for the show.

Each school will also be hosting an post-show event. For the first time this year, Gordon will be coordinating the garden show with science night which begins at 6:30 p.m. while Wolfle will again hook the show to family reading night, beginning at 7 p.m.