No Winter “Wow,” but the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show Will Happen
February 8th, 2022
Cabin-fevered gardeners normally would be gearing up by now to visit the world’s biggest and oldest indoor flower show, which usually takes place in early March just two hours down the turnpike from Harrisburg.
This artist rendering shows the planned entrance to the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show.
Credit: Pa. Horticultural Society
But in case you’re wondering why you’re not hearing much about it, the Philadelphia Flower Show for the second straight year is taking place outside in June.
To be specific, the 2022 show is scheduled for June 11 through 19 in the same place it was held last June – over 15 acres in south Philadelphia’s FDR Park.
Lowee’s Group Tours and I will be offering five daily trips to the show June 13-17. Two of them will be show-only offerings, while three of them will include morning tours of three different Philadelphia-area public gardens before heading over to the Flower Show (Fairmount Park/Shofuso Japanese Garden, Morris Arboretum, and Chanticleer). See details on all of the trips here.
A lot of people (me included) were hoping the show would go back to its good, old, indoor, end-of-winter self after a year when COVID forced it outside for the first time in its 193-year history.
But as people continued to get infected with COVID, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s show planners eventually had to make a decision. The continuing uncertainty carried the day.
“The whole driving force is COVID and the unknowns from it,” Sam Lemheney, PHS’s chief of shows and events, told me when the show pulled the plug on the return-to-inside idea late last September. “We have to decide so far in advance to have everything ready and have plants growing in the greenhouses. There are still way too many unknowns and potential complexities with going back inside the Convention Center. We did it last year outside and figure we can do it again… and hopefully make it better.”
PHS got a ton of feedback from 2021 show-goers. Lemheney said it was a “mixed bag” of reviews.
“First, everybody appreciated that we held the show at all,” he said. “It’s a tradition for many generations, and many people go every year. Some folks told us they loved it outside, and some said they like it better inside.”
A rendering of the planned garden displays at the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show.
What was most striking to me, though, is that Lemheney emphasized that PHS still views the Flower Show as an indoor one.
“Our original goal was to go outside for one year,” he said. “We plan to go back inside as soon as we can.”
The best argument for that is the season-related “wow” factor that’s impossible to replicate outside.
My favorite part of indoor Philadelphia Flower Shows is just walking into the Convention Center while it’s cold and gray and sometimes even snowy and icy outside. Suddenly, it’s instant spring with the scent of flowers and grass, the sound of falling water, and the green lushness of living, breathing plants all around.
While I thought the 2021 outdoor displays were well done, the impact just wasn’t the same because lots of other outdoor gardens were chugging along in peak form by that time of year. Many of the same plants were even blooming in my own yard, for that matter.
It also didn’t help that there were plenty of first-year kinks and the weather was oppressively hot – including a lightning storm that abruptly shut down the show one afternoon.
On the other hand, lots of visitors liked the more spread-out conditions, they liked the wider palette of plants available to the designers, and they liked the park setting.
PHS was happy in that they got a broader cross-section of visitors and hit their attendance targets – although Lemheney wouldn’t say what those were. (The indoor shows normally attract some 250,000 people over nine days.)
With a year under its belt, PHS is hoping to make the most of the 2022 hand it’s been dealt.
“Some things will stay the same, but some will change – hopefully for the better,” Lemheney said.
High on the priority list is improving parking and the traffic flow of the FDR Park site, which sits in the shadow of the city’s sports stadiums.
For starters, the show date is a week later than the 2021 date, a change designed to minimize conflicts with Phillies baseball and 76ers basketball (both of which happened at the same time as the 2021 flower show).
PHS also plans to increase parking and staff to manage it; improve directional signage; run courtesy shuttles from all parking lots and the nearest SEPTA light-rail stop to the show entrance, and improve path access and mobility-impaired accessibility into the park and up to the entry gate.
As of now, no plans are in the works to do the timed-ticketing that was used for 2021 admission. This year, visitors will have the option to buy a ticket for a specific date or pay extra for a ticket that’s good any day.
More food options and more shady sitting are in the plans for the 2022 show.
Lemheney said designers are working on layout and other operational changes based on feedback from the 2021 outdoor experience.
Those include adding more shaded seating areas; having water misters in place in the event of extreme heat; improving communications in case storms threaten; adding complimentary water refill stations throughout the show, and expanding food options.
The 2022 show theme will be “In Full Bloom,” a topic that will focus on the health and healing properties of plants and gardening.
Lemheney said that came as a result of “how people used plants to get them through the pandemic and how they were drawn to their gardens since they couldn’t travel. We’ve long known at PHS how plants can improve health. But so many discovered that that we decided to embrace it in the 2022 show.”
The show so far has lined up a mix of 37 designers from Philadelphia to overseas, including the most female designers the show has ever featured.
Those include first-time participants Susan Cohan, the Association of Professional Landscape Designers’ Designer of the Year for 2021, and Philadelphia’s own Martha Schwartz, as well as returning favorites from last year Wambui Ippolito (winner of last year’s Best in Show award) and Fete Urbane.
PHS will be announcing more details on the 2022 show as they unfold on its Flower Show website.
Tickets for the 2022 show are already on sale.
Prices are $45 for adults (day specific) and $50 for any-day admission. Ages 18-29 are $30 and $35, ages 5-17 are $20 and $25, and children four years old and younger are free.
Family packages also are available, and PHS members get discounted or free tickets, depending on their level of contribution.
For details on and/or to book one of the trips that Lowee’s Group Tours and I are offering to the 2022 show, check out the Garden Series web page of Lowee’s Group Tours.
The Philadelphia Flower Show, started by PHS in 1829, is the nation’s largest and longest-running horticultural event.
Besides producing the flower show, PHS works to improve living environments throughout 250 city neighborhoods, cares for a network of public gardens and landscapes, and offers year-round horticulture learning.
FDR Park, located at Pattison Avenue and South Broad Street, is a 348-acre park carved out of the South Philadelphia tidal marshes and designed by the Olmsted Brothers firm in 1914. It features lakes, lawns, paths, a boathouse, playgrounds, baseball diamonds, the American Swedish Historical Museum, and 126 acres of woodland.