ITALY COMES TO PHILADELPHIA
I can say without the slightest hesitation that my daughter, husband and even the cats have better social lives than I do. I envy them 364 days a year. The one exception is the day I go to the Philadelphia Flower Show.
The Flower Show is the biggest annual horticultural extravaganza on this side of the Atlantic. If you are a specimen plant grower, you can enter one of the competitive classes and see how your exquisitely grown daffodils, orchids or clivia stack up against those of your peers. If you are a garden designer, a landscape company or a horticulturally-focused nonprofit organization, you can sponsor, design or install a large or small display garden that will garner you lots of attention and possibly win you one of the silver plates, cups and other decorative tokens that are given out by the show’s judges. If you are an o ordinary gardener, you can put on a good pair of walking shoes and enjoy the whole spectacle.
The wonderful thing about the Philadelphia Flower Show is the aura of total unreality. Roses bloom alongside tulips. Clematis and orchids coexist as if they sprouted from the same piece of ground. Plants flower abundantly in dark corners. Grass grows like magic in exactly the right places and weeds are absolutely forbidden to appear anywhere, unless they are placed there deliberately, like the show dandelions I saw this year.
Trends flourish in the heady environment. Philadelphia is a great place to see all the latest horticultural fads, sometimes within a few feet of each other. Several years ago, for example, the Flower Show was awash in hellebores. This year I saw only one. Grasses had their moment one year and variegated foliage held sway during another. Fashion is a fickle thing.
“Bella Italia” was the theme of this year’s show, with a giant sunflower graphic symbolizing all the sunshine of that country. The elegant, artfully arranged evergreens and well-disciplined formal landscapes of classic Italian villa gardens were not much in evidence. To be fair, most of those gardens do not have all that many flowers, and that is the idea of the Philadelphia Flower Show.
The most frequently used plant in this year’s show must have been pink bougainvillea, which climbed walls and even showed up trained into standard or tree form. Anthurium, those leathery, almost-artificial looking plants with vaguely heart-shaped flowers, were everywhere. Usually anthurium flowers are red, but I also saw them in white, green and russet shades.
One of the most “Italian”, or more accurately, Mediterranean plants on display was Acanthus mollis or bears’ breeches. The dark green, deeply dissected leaves have inspired artists since ancient times and often appear atop columns as part of elaborately carved Corinthian capitals. I am also fond of the tall purplish-brown and white flowers that are borne on tall stalks in early summer.
The Italian theme was most apparent in the props–which ranged from small to enormous. A genuine Venetian gondola floated in a mock canal, balustrades dotted the landscapes, Classical-style sculpture popped up frequently amidst the flowers and wine was an important element in many displays. One witty garden featured large topiaries shaped like wine bottles. A giant, Chianti-bottle topiary had a straw-wrapped base, just like the real thing.
Despite the prevailing economic climate, the show and its theme were as big as ever, with a huge, multi-level central display, adorned with balustrades. The collaborative work of several longtime Flower Show contributors, the center area was also dominated by enormous urns filled with more multi-colored roses than I have ever seen in one place before.
I don’t know whether attendance was affected by the economy, but the displays seemed nearly as numerous as last year and large crowds surged through the Convention Center. A recent New York Times article documented the decline of metropolitan and regional flower shows in this year of economic tears. “Bella Italia” is a great theme, but this season the most inspiring part of the Philadelphia Flower Show was the fact that it remains as perennial as the grass.