Visitors to the 2010 Northwest Flower and Garden Show, which opened Feb. 3, may be shocked by one of the gardens they see situated amongst the more prim, pretty and perfect gardens at the show.

"Viridis Veni Vidi Vici," created by Ballard High School agriculture students, is a depiction of nature reclaiming an abandoned school – a post-apocalyptic garden.

"People will either love it or hate it," said Emerald McAmis, one of the students behind the project.

The garden features graffitied walls, mangled books and broken desks being taken over by plants grown in the Ballard High School greenhouse and other collected plants, such as weeds and blackberry bushes.

"It's not going to be like anything else at the flower show," said India Carlson, who teaches horticulture and botany at Ballard High School and supervised the project.

The garden is part of the Northwest Flower and Garden Show's Funky Junk program, which allows high school students and nonprofit organizations to create garden displays using recycled and found objects.

Funky Junk was started a few years ago, but this is the first year Ballard High School students have participated.

Despite the chaotic look of the finished project, Carlson said it took a lot of planning to make the garden look unplanned because in reality nature would take over in a non-ordered way.

About 16 Ballard students started on the project in November. They worked on it during winter break and on weekends, and the 10 students who stuck with it installed the garden Jan. 31.

"I'm pretty impressed because it really was their project," Carlson said of her students. "It's student-driven. It's not Ms. Carlson's garden. It's Ballard High School's garden."

"Viridis Veni Vidi Vici" benefitted from donations from Limback Lumber, Swanson's Nursery and the ReStore.

Student Reena Mays said the project was a lot of fun, and McAmis said they learned more about by plants through attempting to make the garden look nature-made instead of manmade.

Carlson said the experience of creating the garden was invaluable to the students.

"You just don't get to plant a garden very often as students," she said.

She said the students worked together to create the garden, but there was some division along gender lines.

Catlin Baker, another student involved in the garden, said she expected the boys to be more hands on and the girls to sit back, but it was really the opposite.

The boys in her class got more hands on when it came time to destroy things for the garden, Carlson said.

Despite the hard work and stress accompanying the creation of the garden, Carlson said she would be open to participating again next year.

"If I have a group of students interested in it, I will totally do it again," she said.

Next year she said she would try to recruit other agriculture teachers in Seattle to get their classes to participate.

There are only two other high school participating in Funky Junk at this year's Northwest Flower and Garden Show, and Carlson said she is pretty sure Ballard is the first public high school in Seattle to participate.

Ballard ended up taking second place out of the three high schools, and Carlson said overall their garden seemed to be a hit.

She said some people couldn't figure out what they were going for, but others said it was a good reminder to take care of the planet.