PHILLY FLOWER SHOW DELIVERS
Philadelphia Flower Show and Longwood Gardens a double treat
It is always a pleasure to visit a world- class garden, and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania is certainly worthy of that classification.
I got to visit it for the first time recently when I was in Philadelphia for the city’s flower show, the biggest indoor one in the world.
The combination of touring the flower show and seeing Longwood was an unforgettable treat. Both offer exciting ideas and inspiration.
First, let me tell you about Longwood, located about 45 kilometres west of Philly in the Brandywine Creek Valley.
I first heard about it years ago when Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hobhouse told me how much they liked it and how one day I must see it. So it has always been on my bucket list.
What I was not expecting was the level of excellence inside the hothouses.
The attention to detail in the magnificent picture- perfect floral displays matched the standard of a gold exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show.
The only difference being that at Longwood the sumptuous displays have to be maintained 365 days a year, not just for a week.
Longwood started out as farmland owned by Quakers in the 1800s before it was taken over by multimillionaire industrialist Pierre du Pont in the early 1900s.
Today, the estate covers 1,077 acres ( 436 hectares) and is still a reflection of du Pont’s original vision for a garden with superb woodlands, tropical glasshouses, topiary garden, gorgeous meadows and a world- class arboretum.
More than four acres ( 1.6 hectares) of gardens are contained under glass, providing a welcome escape into the warm tropics from the long, cold Pennsylvania winter.
When I stepped inside the glasshouses, the first sight to greet me was a stunningly lush and colourful composition of blue plectranthus and hydrangeas, lavishly surrounded by bismarckia palms, giant cycads and dense drifts of sansevieria and bromeliads.
Rising out of a shallow pond were two pedestals on which were placed large pots crammed full of white and yellow orchids.
In other areas, I found exotic, super colourful displays of yellow veltheimia set among bold drifts of pink oriental lilies and pelargoniums. All the planting was artistically designed and immaculately maintained, not a petal was out of place.
Pillars around the gardens were wrapped in creeping figs. Next to a stage area where flamenco dancers were set to perform, there were rows of tropical clerodendron in full bloom above carpets of cineraria.
Towers of bougainvillea added more drama, along with the hypnotically vibrant combination of purple primulas dotted with red guzmania.
The colour and diversity of plant material inside went on and on. It was a little overwhelming.
A lush lawn in the centre provide a little calm relief and a restful balance from the razzledazzle of the busy flower borders where crotons were mass planted next to acalypha, pink kohleria and abutilons.
Casually tucked into one bed was a sculptured coleus, patiently trained over 30 years into a two- tiered topiary with a sturdy woody stem.
Other highlights included an exceptional gallery of bonsai, a Brazilian corner designed by Roberto Burle Marx, immaculately espaliered nectarine trees, a silver garden comprising grey- silver foliage plants, a Mediterranean garden, fun children’s garden and one of the longest green- walls in North America.
Longwood is blessed by having a significant endowment, now worth about $ 800 million US, of which the garden is allowed to access about four per cent a year.
This allows Longwood to offer free horticultural training courses, as well as subsidize the admission charge .
The garden has 45 full- time gardeners, but it is also free to make use of its volunteers who are organized into workforces to help keep the garden shipshape.
Top horticultural technicians have been hired away from Disney World to make sure displays are as visually entertaining as they are botanically impressive, but the emphasis throughout is on horticultural excellence.
Plants are inspected daily and nothing is allowed to remain unless it looks perfect. Flowers are held in production greenhouses, so they can be quickly moved into displays when they are at their peak.
Back at the flower show in the centre of Philadelphia, the theme was “art and horticulture” and the theatrical garden displays did not disappoint with all sorts of colourful interpretations of “ARTiculture.”
Two gardens were built by gold- winning Chelsea Flower Show designers, Andy Sturgeon and James Basson. The quality of both their gardens made an instant impact and brought the classiness of Chelsea to Philadelphia.
Sturgeon produced a tropical Brazilian- style courtyard garden, while Basson cooked up an artistic burnt grass and mud- wall garden with burnt stump at the centre.
My favourite feature was a row of window boxes and hanging baskets on a theme of Surrealism in Motion. The boxes were packed with succulents and tropical specimens, such as aeonium, aloe, crassula, kalanchoe, opuntia, echeveria and haworthia.
I also loved a surrealistic floral art display featuring a female mannequin with a bouquet of roses for hair.
The main difference between the Philadelphia flower show and others, such as the ones in Chelsea and Seattle, is the show’s willingness to embrace floral art in all its most expressive and imaginative forms with unapologetic enthusiasm. This gives the show a terrific energy and dramatic colour.
Longwood Gardens and the Philadelphia Flower Show are always worth your time. Don’t pass up the chance to see them if you are ever close by.