Philadelphia Flower Show Brings Focus on National Parks

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society will present this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show, starting March 5th. The country’s largest and longest-running horticultural display is sure to once again wow visitors with stunning displays of plants and flowers.

Flowers bring imagination to life at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

This year, the Flower Show is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the National Park Service by theming the show around national parks. The theme, “Explore America!” brings in plants and flowers from all around the United States. The Pennsylvania Convention Center’s 33 acres will bloom with gorgeous displays, which are divided into three categories. There are Landscape displays, in which “designers create seasonal gardens in full-bloom and in life-sized scale. The displays include hundreds of varieties of flowering plants and mature trees and shrubs.” This year’s landscape displays will be inspired by national parks including Yellowstone, Acadia, and Olympic National Parks. Then there are Floral exhibits: “Floral designers create surreal scenes that incorporate breathtaking displays of cut flowers. These larger-than-life exhibits offer an artful take on the Show theme and provide visitors with a unique perspective that can challenge conventional standards for color and design.” Expect to see more tributes to the national parks in the floral category. Finally, Educational displays “showcase creations by universities, greening organizations and horticultural organizations that take a how-to approach to bringing life to their exhibits, utilizing today’s best practices and sustainable methods.”

This year’s Flower Show is not without some controversy. PhillyNORML and other pro-marijuana groups had hoped to create a presence at the show displaying information about cannabis, which is arguably the nation’s most-profitable flower. Proponents were hoping to staff a booth offering information on pot’s medicinal benefits, history, and facts about its growth. But it was not meant to be. Obviously actual marijuana plants couldn’t be present at the event, owing to the fact that they are illegal, but Skip Shuda, CEO of Green Rush Advisors, said that the group would have enjoyed passing out photo brochures. Philadelphia Horticulture Society spokesperson, Alan Jaffe, said that the marijuana display simply did not fit within the guidelines for Flower Show displays, and insists that the ensuing controversy over the marijuana ban was a “misunderstanding.”

Want to attend the Flower Show? Information on hours and buying tickets can be found here.