Hopped a plane to Philadelphia last weekend to see the Philadelphia Flower Show. This is the premier flower & garden show in the United States, having started in 1830 and still going strong. It’s well worth the price of admission (although the airfare & hotel will cost you a little more).

Tons of people, including lots of young folks. A little Google search dug up attendance figures for the last 5 years—which hover regularly around 250,000. Clearly this is a Happenin’ Place the first week of March.

The theme for 2009 was Bella Italia, so there were several gardens representing different areas of Italy near the main entrance. The first one in particular was a stunner.

 You walked in the front door and there, up on a pedestal stood a huge—I mean, 15-foot-tall—urn overflowing with an arrangement of cut roses and other flowers. Breathtaking. Flanking the urn were arched stone walls atop which were perched 10 additional, only slightly smaller urns with roses. And on the other side of the central container there was a 30-foot-long rectangular pool spouting jets of water and lined by delphiniums, pink roses and angelonia. All blooming, of course.

This being spring in Pennsylvania, it was no surprise to find hundreds of fully flowering azaleas on display. But several somebodies had also been forcing exotic bougainvilleas into bloom. They might be vines in real life, but here they were bedding plants and standards.

Because the central theme was Italian, many gardens were fairly formal with statuary and fountains. But for the common touch, musicians and dancers had been set up on a stage to perform folk music. Envision happy costumed peasants playing mandolins and hopping about and dancing. A cheery touch.

Lots of orchids gave up their lives for this show. Especially in the displays by the floral designers. Imagine, for example, dangling clusters of purple orchid flowers nestled among silver gray tillandias. Or a mannequin wearing an 1890s’s “dress” complete with bustle and train fashioned from dried hydrangea flowers and dotted with sparkling silver and gold butterflies. Or a strapless evening gown made of straw. Straw, you ask? Well, you had to be there. Believe me, it was the epitome of elegance. I came home with a new admiration for the ingenuity of floral designers.

My favorite garden? It started out with 3 dead weeping beeches—one of them 30 feet tall—that had been painted in pink, yellow, turquoise, purple stripes along the trunks and along every single branch, down to the teeniest, tiniest tips. The colors changed every foot or so. Then there were 3 horse tanks, painted black inside and filled to the brim with water in which the tallest tree was reflected. As you peered into the water, pristine and perfectly motionless, you saw the black shimmering water and all these colors going down, down, down. Echoing these water pools were "pools" of succulents. More ingenuity.

For sheer horticultural expertise, however, nothing could beat the bulb specialist who had forced virtually every kind of hardy bulb into bloom as well as about 20 different amaryllis. Here were cultivars of Iris reticulata and Iris danfordiae, which bloom in March, several kinds of tulips, daffs and hyacinths (of course) but also a massive lily display, including Asiatic types, Orientals, and the hybrid and oh-so-fragrant Orienpets that normally bloom in July. Then a few unusual plants—nerine and ranunculus. This was a garden where you could study and learn while you were being dazzled. Necessary in a flower show.

Also noteworthy: garden club participation was large. One section was devoted to a competition in which garden clubs designed front yard gardens for a small Philly townhouse. One of the big display gardens was put together by the Men’s Garden Club of Philadelphia. Most of the gardens were designed by professionals.

The venue, the Pennsylvania Convention Center, is fairly new, spacious and well-designed. It connects to the commuter train line, so you can reach it from the airport without ever having to go outside. I stayed in a nice hotel a block away. All very convenient. The show floor is similar to the one at Navy Pier. Both have industrial ceilings with pipes and all the workings in plain view. At Philadelpia the ceiling was painted black.

Philadelphia’s flower show is good. But so is Chicago’s, just opened and running to March 15. I saw it this morning and I was impressed. But I’ll tell you more about it in my next post. In the meantime, go and see it yourself.

—Carolyn Ulrich,
Chicagoland Gardening Editor