Spring in Paris in Philadelphia in Winter

The tradition of The Philadelphia Flower Show begun in 1829 by The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. The Show was held in a small building called Masonic Hall where Twenty-five people showed off their horticultural treasures to each other.

The show has moved locations a few times since then and is currently in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, a 33 acre space, with the exhibit taking up 10 of those. It's the largest indoor Flower Show in the world, entertaining crowds over 250,000 people annually.

They have themes each year and this year the theme was 'Paris in Spring'. This included many overweight Americans wearing berets, hot dog stands being called Boulangerie, lots of misspelling, and a replica of the lower third of the Eiffle Tower with swaths of tulips and roses on each side. Paris never looked so good!


How to describe it: shock and awe, surreal, extravagant, artificial, beautiful, and completely unsustainable. The flowers in the tulip display had to be changed out three times during the ten days the exhibit was open. All the bulbs, perennials, and huge trees, are forced into bloom in giant greenhouses, whole houses and small forests temporarily constructed, and all this big production is made so we can just feast our eyes on the fluorescent beauty of nature months in advance. Green walls, packed tight with tropical ferns and orchids, were already starting to fade on this last weekend, and I can only imagine the plants fate after the show comes down.









The best part of the show are the rare specimens entered into the contests. Here you can see the real horticultural skill of obsessed people. They have nurtured some of these plants into the fantastic form they're now in for perhaps the last twenty years. I mean how often do you have to mist a fern to get it to thrive like this?!


This is a creation of both nature and man and this is the real stunning part of the show.

Tropical Worlds in Winter

In a time when most landscapers have no work, we're luckily keeping busy. We just installed a temporary green wall for Lacoste, the clothing company. They're having a big soirée Feb.8 (with lots of good looking French people! ) to celebrate the launch of their new line. The Quebec company La Prod was really cool and organized an awesome design for the shop. We were happy to be part of the whole production. Here are some pix of the installation:




Also, another indoor installation of ours was just mentioned with a picture in The Architect's Newspaper in 01/19/2011. Check it out:

Plant-O-Rama

This silly sounding event is Metro Hort's annual trade show that takes place January 25th, 9am-4pm, at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It's located in the luxurious Palm House that keeps everyone warm regardless of the weather outdoors. Just to come visit all the vendors, Alive Structures being one of them, is free. The vendors include over 40 businesses and many cool not-for-profit organizations. There are lots of nurseries represented - come and tell them how you want more native plants offered!

To hear speakers and take part in the Symposium a ticket costs $55 for the day. This year the speakers include, Tony Avent, Adam Wheeler, and Bob Hyland (who will talk all about what it's like to run a nursery).

There are always a lot of great people and plant enthusiasts there so you should all definitely come check it out, warm up and get excited about Spring, I know hard to imagine!

See: metrohort.org for more details and check out these pix I found on line of Plant-o-Ramas years past... See you there!

Iceland In December

Recently, on a flight from NYC to Paris, we took a three day layover in Iceland. I feel compelled to share my experience on this underpopulated moonlike island and describe the amazing landscapes we saw. The sun comes up around noon and ducks back down around 4. But really the sun never comes up very far. It stays pretty close to the horizon casting a slanted light onto the land and a sense of sunrise or sunset throughout the day. The history of Iceland is marked with several volcanic explosions which have destroyed much of the old buildings we would have liked to see. Apparently, the island used to be lush with birch trees but now there were hardly any to speak of. Erosion is a serious problem and establishing new trees is challenging with such thin soil. But a layer of moss covered up much of the rocky black earth intermixed with low growing heather, saxifrage, and alpine flowers and grasses. One tall plant which caught my attention is the Angelica Herb that grows indigenously throughout the island. Even though the plant had gone dormant long ago, it's attractive seed head and tall stalk was left to silhouette against the sky and decorate the landscape.



But now to our adventure. Firstly, we stopped at a spa called The Blue Lagoon. This is a naturally occurring bay of blue geothermally warmed water. The mud on the bottom of the lake is white with Silica, which you can put on your face and body for 10 minutes and after words come out like a movie star! Or so they say. But one thing is for sure, the lagoon is one of the most relaxing experiences I have ever had. The temperature of the water is around 90 deg. F and the air is about 30. The water did feel healing and the experience is pretty magical and looks a bit apocalyptic.




The second day we explored Reykjavik, which turned out to be pretty dull, except for the fishing docks and the view of the mountains one could see from there. Also, of interest is the National Museum, which was fascinating, and we got to try on viking outfits!





We ate an excellent meal of fishy things and then traveled in the dark afternoon onto Þingvellir National Park and stayed in a hotel where we were the only occupants. The sky was completely clear and that evening and the air was freezing. The hotel had an outdoor hot tub which was a dramatic change from the air. We enjoyed "Gull" the Icelandic beer and saw a shooting star! The next day we explored what's called "The Golden Circle". This consists of a beautiful valley where the first Icelanders met to create a Parliament, a Geyser, and waterfalls (Gullfuss). The parliament valley is very picturesque and I could easily imagine viking-like men wearing fur vests on horseback galloping between the fjords.














The geyser we saw was very active-it erupted three times in a row for us! The waterfalls are huge and partly frozen and the chasm they fall through seemed to have no bottom.

After that we headed back towards the airport, and enjoyed the last hours of sunlight from the car. We saw fields full of small horses that huddled together in the cold, and a rare house here and there. After three days we really felt like we had seen a lot, but one thing is for sure, we're going to come back in summer!

(didn't take horse picture!)

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