:-P
you meany
You've been asking me to replant those pots. I think it would be unwise for you to do anything other than give me a big kiss for actually doing it (and you may also tell me what a superb job I did, and how much you like the flowers).
Flower Shows Growing Like Weeds
By KEN DRUSE
Published: March 3, 2005
EXT week Jill Rehn will travel from Baton Rouge, La., to attend the Philadelphia Flower Show. "I want to go because I want to learn," said Ms. Rehn, who lives on eight rolling acres with 300-year-old live oak trees. "I heard this is the best show."
I doubt she will be disappointed. The Philadelphia Flower Show, which opens Sunday, is the largest indoor event of its kind in the United States - the Cadillac of spring exhibitions.
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Ms. Rehn is a serious gardener, so I know she will take her notebook (and her checkbook). My advice to her? Wear comfortable shoes. One can easily spend eight hours walking among more than 40 major exhibits, not to mention the pest control seminars, demonstrations of ikebana and wedding bouquets, and the 140 vendors selling everything from toy trains to Celtic soaps.
Flower shows are thriving, even in the age of TiVo, satellite radio and reality shows. The Philadelphia show had 265,000 visitors last year, up more than 25 percent from attendance 10 years ago. Its success is a reflection of the surging interest in things green and growing. Americans are taking the call of the wild seriously and living outdoors more than ever. Can waterproof plasma television sets be far behind?
It's not surprising, then, that there will be new stops on the flower show circuit. Des Moines, for example, will mount its first show next year. Even the little show in my corner of New Jersey is growing. "Springfest" began nine years ago at the Sussex County Fairgrounds. When it opens this year on March 11, it will be four times its original size, with more than 8,000 visitors expected.
If Philadelphia is a Cadillac, then Springfest is a John Deere riding mower. The Maymont Flower and Garden Show in Richmond, Va., is a bit retro, but compact and zippy like a Mini Cooper. The New England Flower Show in Boston is refined, reliable and appeals to mature audiences, like a Buick Regal.
The Cincinnati Flower Show, held outdoors next month, is popular, especially for its Parisian-style tented shopping area, where one can find everything from deer fencing to prairie-style planters. It is as slick as an Airstream trailer. The flower show in Rhode Island, the Ocean State, would have to be a Mercury Mariner SUV. I liked the old San Francisco Flower and Garden Show until it moved in 1998 from Fort Mason to the Cow Palace. Now it is too huge and too crowded. The show has gone from flower-power Volkswagen to cattle car.
The challenge for flower shows is to please all the people all the time. Some visitors are just hoping for a shot of spring tonic. For the most serious garden addicts, the shows are like a badly needed fix after a long stretch of winter. According to organizers, more than 30 percent of the visitors to the Philadelphia show are out-of-towners like Ms. Rehn. To keep the attention of the spectators, the show must offer more than the color and smell of flowers; it must offer entertainment.
"Most visitors say they want ideas to take home," said Sam Lemheney, who, as director of show design, oversees all the exhibitions. "But no matter what people are coming here for, they want to be wowed."
The wow factor is clearly on the minds of organizers these days. The theme of the Philadelphia show is "America the Beautiful." Crowds will enter through red roses, flowering cherry trees and hand-forged iron gates that stood at the Northeast entrance to the White House for 118 years. The American Horticultural Society acquired them after they were replaced in the 1930's; they will make their debut at the show after a lengthy restoration.
I have to say that design for mass appeal is one of my misgivings about flower shows. But I know that I can count on Michael Petrie, vice president of J. Franklin Styer (www.styers.com), a nursery in Concordville, Pa., to create something imaginative. This year Styer will show weeping, variegated and golden willows covering an early spring garden made completely of willow plants. Even the gazebo, fences and ornaments are woven from willows.
But art is not as common as spectacle in Philadelphia, and perhaps the word most often used to describe the show is "Disney."
I will probably pass the crowds at the treehouse exhibit with its winding path and hardwood forest. Instead, I will head straight for the "Horticourt," where 3,000 or so individual submissions by amateur gardeners are shown in categories or "classes" including cacti and succulents, orchids, trained vines and begonias.
This is the way I like my plants, at least in a show. I want to pay reverence in hushed tones to living works of art. "We think of nature as a green mask," said Stephen Maciejewski, a contestant who has been coaxing rock garden plants, including Cardunculus and Townsendia, to bloom just in time for the show by shuttling them between fluorescent lights and his refrigerator. "But in the horticultural classes, we get to see plants individually, as stars."
Sylvia Lin, another amateur exhibitor, said she particularly envies Mr. Maciejewski's entry this year in the succulent class, Aeonium arboreum atropurpureum crest. "She offered me her right arm for that plant," he said, "then both arms, then cash. But I would never sell."
Flower shows began as horticultural presentations, a sophisticated version of the old-fashioned county fair. The competitive spirit might be as old as gardening itself. In Colonial Virginia, Thomas Jefferson challenged with his neighbors to see who could produce the first peas of the season.
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The Philadelphia show was first held in 1829, with participants sharing their exotic acquisitions - magnolias and peonies from China, West Indian sugar cane, Arabian coffee and something called a poinsettia. Later, society gardeners would exhibit single cut flowers from their gardens (or their gardeners' gardens) to earn ribbons. Owners of the great estates along the Main Line entered entire garden tableaus.
There may no longer be great estates to help flower shows around the country, but the competitive spirit lives on - sometimes at the expense of horticulture. I am surprised at how often exhibitors fail to identify plants. This may sound like plant snobbery, but labeling is actually crucial to the show's service and education. If you see a plant that you would like to buy, you need to know what it is.
Flower shows are bigger productions than most people imagine. Forcing flowers to bloom out of season is hard enough, but presentations have to be shining examples - that means more than concrete pavers and shredded bark mulch.
Organizers of the smaller shows might be surprised to discover that exhibitions by landscapers, florists and educational groups in Philadelphia are subsidized, at about $20 a square foot of exhibition space, by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Assignments for the main exhibition spaces take place about a year and a half in advance, and planning for the 2006 show is already well under way.
I think a better theme for this year's show might have been "One World." Cadillac and riding mower aside, I would prefer a show that addresses America and its environment, a show that could be compared to a hybrid Prius. Maybe I'll be shopping for one next week on my way back from Philadelphia. |
