This weekend marks a busy time for the Cape Coral community. With two Celebrate Cape Coral events happening, area residents are sure to find something to do.

The Cape Coral “March into Spring” Garden Show, hosted by the Garden Club of Cape Coral, opened Friday and continues through today, featuring a wide variety of horticulture exhibits such as landscape designs, flower arrangements and educational exhibits on such topics as conservation issues and environmental awareness.

In addition to the Garden Show, the 19th annual Jazz and Blues Concert will be held this afternoon and evening at Jaycee Park off Beach Parkway down by the river.

“People should really come check us out,” said Joyce Camingore, member of the Cape Coral Garden Club. “People need to know that there is such a wonderful array of foliage and blooms that flourishes in the Florida area.”

Camingore said the garden show should really be exciting to northerners as a lot of the designs featured include plants and blooms that most would have to grow in a pot — but grow wild here.

“When I first got down here from Ohio, I was amazed at how the plants I would have grown inside grew out in yards here,” she said.

Floral arrangements are one of the featured exhibits and they are set up in the following categories: “Wearing Green,” where arrangements have an emphasis on green plants; “Lunch on the Lanai,” where exhibitors set up their arrangements on a table setting for two; and “Time to Work in the Yard,” where exhibitors were asked to incorporate garden tools into their arrangements.

Garden Club member Barbara Salafia, who took first place on Friday in the “Lunch on the Lanai” category, said she is excited to have received the top prize.

“I just moved here from Connecticut last year and this is my first garden show so it is really an honor,” she said.

Other exhibits will include a horticulture division, which features both foliage and flowering designs, and the cut specimen division, which features cut flowers such as birds of paradise and blooms. Cacti and succulents in containers and cut trees and shrubs also will be part of this exhibit.

The show will run today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Cape Coral Public Library located at 921 S.W. 39th Terrace.

The event is free and open to the public.

The Jazz and Blues Festival kicks off at at 5 p.m., with gates opening at 3 p.m.

The event will feature Little Eddie and the Fat Fingers and Mario Infanti and the Cat Man Doodz. Headlining the concert will be nationally known recording artist Boney James.

Tickets for the event are $25 at the gate and children under 12 are admitted free.

Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs, coolers and blankets, although there will be wide a variety of vendors on hand offering food and refreshments.