The Philadelphia Flower Show (grand Poobah of American flower shows) is the first show I’ve attended where floral exhibition was integrated into the landscape rather than segregated as a separate area. This year’s theme, ‘ARTiculture’, found designs inspired by a selected piece of art, a range of paintings by a particular artist, or even a specific exhibit at a museum.
An imaginative, enormous flight of floral imagination greeted us as we (with fellow APLD members) entered the show. Nearby was a large ‘wild’ garden that focused on native plants. We saw gardens inspired by painters, Mondrian, Matisse, Wyeth, and more, as well as one inspired by a Korean exhibit. Smaller student gardens emphasized sustainability. Here are the gardens or details that captured my attention:
Painted bamboo created the structure for these floral + bamboo creations mimicking palm trees.
An amazing chandelier made of plastic spoons and topped with plants.
A shockingly different sort of garden than one usually finds at a garden show. Within the cob wall was a seat treated with shou sugi-ban, a Japanese form of flamed wood preservation. A large bowl offered a liquid contrast to all of the dry elements.
Using all dried plants set against an arc cob wall created a strong textural contrast and celebrated the forms left for winter.
While this display was abundantly decorated with a myriad of orchids, my eye went directly to this intriguing sculpture created with straight green twigs attached to a curvilinear form.
A quiet contemporary garden in Sturgeon’s typical restrained, but elegant, style.
Modern orange chairs added a color element to this otherwise naturalistically colored garden.
Adding blue glass to gabions filled with stone adds a little sparkle.
Inspired by Matisse, large colorfully painted shapes provide the art set against thousands of bulbs and spring blooming shrubs.
Fragrant orange hyacinth were stiff competition for the colorful art forms.
This was a very quirky floral display but I was fascinated by how the designer mingled all of these colorful forms. Inspired by the art of Wassily Kandinsky.
Inspired by “Dancing the Dream” this floral display was hard to miss with its rectilinear forms and bright colors.
Inspired by Mondrian, an art student’s garden interpretation.
A students interpreted version of Cristo’s Central Park display.
An interesting intersection of round forms in the logs, inside the gabion, and inset into the path.
This should have been better developed as art, but I appreciated the noble attempt at creating art using recycled pipes.
There were some beautiful elements of this design, but I found the intermingled forms to be too much at the same scale and without a solid relationship to one another.
The back side of the first photo is lovely but has little relationship to the front.
This exhibit almost looked as though it had been picked up out of Seattle and placed in Philadelphia. I loved the use of dried grasses and the round metal forms containing logs.
