I had a fantastic gardening experience last week. I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show. It was amazing! Everywhere I looked I was awed by the great landscape design and beautiful flowers. Tulips, daffodils, azaleas,dogwoods, magnolias, calla lilies and more were in full bloom. Even wild flowers (which are much harder to force into bloom at the right time), virginia bluebells, trilliums and others. There was something for everyone’s style of gardening. Formal, small lots, city lots, informal, wild and tropical and exotic. One of my favorites (and it is hard not to have a long list of favorites) was a garden depicting a wild bayou with a decrepit shack complete with an realistic alligator in the pond, and native shrubs planted as if in a back woods with 20 ft tall cypress trees and even their “knees” (those woody knobs that grow up out of the swampy ground around the cypress tree that are used by the tree to get extra oxygen). That garden was very realistic looking with all the ground covered with moss and leaves and sticks and logs here and there. Superb design! It won some awards so the judges and the people liked it too.
The Philadelphia Flower Show is held in the Pennsylvania Convention Center and covers 10 acres! A third to a half of that was the landscape designs, another third was standard flower show entries such as houseplants, floral designs, topiaries and bonsai. And another third was vendors with great gardening stuff.
We(myself and two of my hiking buddy gals) got there at 8:30 in the morning and stayed till almost 8 at night. What an experience!
http://www.theflowershow.com/home/index.html
Bye now, Judy