Is It Once and Done for an Outdoors Philadelphia Flower Show?

June 22nd, 2021

   The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society didn’t want to move its world’s-biggest indoor flower show outside or change the timing from end of winter to late spring.

This Habitat sign spelled out in dried flowers welcomed visitors to the 2021 outdoors Philadelphia Flower Show.

   If COVID wouldn’t have come along, I’m sure the 2021 Philadelphia Flower Show would have taken place inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in early March, just as it has done to crowds to the tune of 250,000 since moving from the Philadelphia Civic Center in 1996.

   Faced with the prospect of canceling or going outside, PHS picked the latter and made the most of what it could at the city’s FDR Park near Philly’s sports stadiums.

   Normally, PHS knows the show dates and themes three years out. But because of the lingering uncertainty of COVID, a decision hasn’t yet been announced what will happen next year.

   “We are still taking feedback and will make an announcement in the coming months about the future,” said Sin Gogolak, PHS’s associate director of communications.

   My hunch is that if at all possible, the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show will go back inside the convention center at the usual time early next March.

   For one thing, the show is under contract with the Convention Center for next year.

The outdoors venue at least spread out the crowds.

   I saw the 2021 show four times and thought PHS staff did an overall good job of making lemonade out of lemons – at least with the major decisions.

   The FDR Park site was good for location, the layout between the park’s boathouse and American Swedish Historical Museum was well planned, and the diversity and quality of the display gardens was on par with most years.

   Some visitors actually preferred how the layout was more “integrated” with vendors and food booths more mixed among the gardens.

   The food options also got higher marks than the rather abysmal choices usually available inside the convention center.

   Most of all, though, the leading improvement was how the crowds were much more spread out over the outdoors 15 acres than the more cramped 10 acres inside.

   Despite the prospect of a return to the cattle-herd conditions, I’ll be happy if the 2022 show goes back inside… and stays there.

   A couple of key drawbacks this year outweighed everything else in my mind.

   The first one was the loss of that intangible wow moment that comes from entering the show near the end of a long, dark winter and encountering an instant floral-scented spring-time.

This was the first display visitors saw… the Olmsted Pavilion lined with arms of dried, spray-painted ferns and baby’s breath.

   That’s impossible to copy outside in June.

   Much of the Philly show’s magic comes from displays that really shouldn’t be happening inside on concrete when it’s still winter.

   Because of the skilled growers who know how to force flowers into bloom on cue for showtime, we get to see magnificent creations in which the tulips, roses, orchids, and hydrangeas are firing on all cylinders at the same time.

   This year, the gardens were colorful and diverse, but most of them were composed of plantings you could see at many other venues this time of year – including some in our own yards.

   The second big issue for me is the weather.

   The end-of-winter timing often means snow mars attendance, but if you can get to the show, at least it’s comfortable and snow-free inside.

Hydrangeas were wilting in the show’s intensely hot days.

   Outside this year, visitors had to cope with sweltering, humid, above-90-degree days for the first few days. Even the plants were wilting.

   Then on show Tuesday, a lightning storm hit, forcing the show to evacuate everyone, cancel the rest of the day, and upset people with a no-refund policy (not to mention the pandemonium of the sudden mass exodus.)

   On Friday, it rained all afternoon, soaking visitors and muddying the already-wet ground from Tuesday’s downpour.

   Overall, the uncooperative weather for most of the show made it difficult to fully appreciate the massive additional work that went into setting up the venue (three weeks in the making). That’s ironic (“Murphy-esque?”) because PHS selected the first-week-of-June time because the weather records indicate it’s a week that’s usually pleasantly warm and rain-free.

I especially liked this display with sculpture heads mounted in a reflecting pool under the shade of a bamboo forest.

   The show also caught some flak for not having water stations set up to deal with the heat, and some people weren’t happy with the walk from the parking lots and the lines (at times) to use the shuttle buses.

   COVID and the outdoor venue also did away with some popular show features, such as the free wine-tasting hall, the amateur plant-specimen judging (plants were displayed, not judged), and the lineup of educational talks.

   Maybe it’ll be possible to roll some of the things that people liked about the outdoor show into future indoor shows.

   But even if not, I’d be OK with going back to the way it was. I’ve seen about 30 end-of-winter shows and am always impressed.

   If you want to read more about how the 2021 Philadelphia Flower Show was “familiar yet different,” see the PennLive report I wrote last week with lots of photos. Note that it’s a “subscriber exclusive,” meaning you have to be a Patriot-News/PennLive subscriber to access it.