The weather at the Philadelphia Flower Show was sunny and warm enough to wear a light jacket as spring arrived in the city at the Philadelphia Convention Center on March 8. Thousands swarmed the expo hall with sprouts and crowns of flowers fastened to their heads and bouquets in hand.
Mothers with their mothers, infants carried by fathers, and young couples holding hands attended the spring show.
“I came to the show to spend time with my mom and enjoy the beautiful flowers,” said Amy Marks, a UPenn alum and ardent flower show guest. “I would say, making the flower crowns and seeing the individual artworks that were entered for judging, especially the dresses, was my favorite part.”
Amy’s mother, Michelle Zieser, much like many of the other guests, is an avid gardener herself, and tends to her own 18 by 20 foot garden of flowers and vegetables. She is a member of the Pottstown Area Garden Club and enjoyed seeing the lilacs, tulips and hyacinths at the Philly Flower Show.
The Philadelphia Flower Show, run by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, is one of the oldest horticulture shows of its kind in the world, said Ray Murphy, a gardener and Flower Show volunteer for 20 years.
Roughly 250,000 people attend the show every year to enjoy exhibits, large and small. A “Horticourt” is held, where individual plants are judged in a variety of categories. Many exhibits showcased this year’s theme, Gardens of Tomorrow, with futuristic-inspired horticulture.
“I come every year with my mom and I’m not really that good at growing anything, but it’s nice to see all the small, intricate stuff that people worked on for months,” said Sam Szura, a guest at the event.
The flower show also offered educational exhibits, including Temple’s own exhibit, which won three awards this year.
There are three sections in Temple’s exhibit: a community garden, a reflection pool and a hillside meadow. The garden is made of repurposed materials, including pallets and broken concrete, a moonlit pool with a mirror on the side made the reflection pool and the hillside showed “the ephemeral beauty of nature with wild landscape” and a vernal pool, said Cameron Coless, a junior art architecture major giving a tour of the exhibit.
“You get to see a lot of creativity and all of the different exhibits and I also love that the students get to be a part of it,” said Annmarie Ely, a volunteer representative for the Delaware Valley University’s Landscape Architecture Program. “It’s a really unique experience that they’re able to see their vision really come to life and see the public enjoy it.”
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