Here's a shot of Bailey Hale, one of three partners in MODA Botanica. You can see one of the allees in the exhibit. Check out the water bottles, which are headed for recycling after the show. Perhaps this is a sign that more emphasis is being placed on recycling and reusing materials used in the show. Many are tossed at week's end. Here's a silver lining: I've never done this, but I've heard from many people that if you go to the show on the last day, which is next Sunday, lots of plants get given away. Now that's what I call reusing. And not a bad way to economically feed your plant-purchasing habit. Ciao!

I wish I could do MODA Botanica's exhibit better justice than this, but it just didn't work. This exhibit is one of the most interesting at the show, at least from what I've seen so far. MODA Botanica is here in Philly, with three young and creative partners. I talked with one of them, Bailey Hale, as his team was putting 2,500 dark purple orchids into water tubes. The exhibit is meant to be a modern treatment of classic garden forms ... it features terracing and formal allees of hedges or topiaries using unusual materials, to say the least. There is a river of leaves from a plant called crazy vine from the Philippines and cascading amaryllis ... this is a lime green amaryllis (ever seen one of those? me either) that should start blooming over the coming week. How beautiful will that be? Black and gray yarn hangs down like roots on the underside. Two allees mimic the rows of cypress trees in Italy. Yellow twig dogwood topiaries are decorated with yellow orchids and green and purple anthuriums and a new rose called 'Amnesia,' grown in South America with no pesticides. It starts out pale green and opens to lavender. Wow! The allees are "planted" in tiny plastic water bottles that will be recycled after the show. The water bottles are meant to symbolize the importance of water in the landscape and I like the recycling touch. This is MODA's first year in the show; in fact, the company is only a year old. Bailey says the flower show folks were looking for some new blood - well, yeah, I think they got some! And he says they were encouraged to "shake things up a little bit."  He's thrilled and so, it seems, are show-goers. Other jobs - weddings and such - require these clever folks to do whatever the client wishes. It pays the bills and can be very rewarding, but this ... this is pure fun. "A labor of love," says Bailey, who is also an opera singer. He'll have to skip out at some point this week to join the chorus of "Turandot," now being performed at the Academy of Music. He sings basso. Talk about multi-tasking! Ciao.

Michael Petrie is known for his creative exhibits at the flower show. He was affiliated for more than 20 years with Styer's Nursery and now is out on his own with Michael Petrie's Handmade Gardens in Downingtown. Michael is always someone to watch at the show. This year, "The Painted Tree" is spare and interesting. He's got a 25-foot - dead - weeping beech tree, sans leaves, painted a different color every six to 10 inches. The tree is surrounded by nine cattle troughs filled with water dyed black. The troughs are deep and dark and reflect the painted tree. Michael has also put painted succulents in these troughs, one of which is shown here. Cool. They look like arms. In an interview a few weeks ago, Michael said, "I'm resisting the temptation to junk it up by putting lots of other trees or flowering trees in the exhibit because they would detract from the effect. If you think about it, water and pools and reflections of the sky always help to make the garden feel more expansive. It brings the sky down to earth and creates intersecting planes of view." He worried about the convention center ceiling being reflected. Not to worry. "Painted tree" works. Ciao! 

Michael Hasco has created a slew of kooky shoes for the Milan exhibit at the flower show. They're part of a Milanese boutique that also features handbags and hats made of dried and silk flowers, feathers, seeds and other natural materials. This exhibit was filled with people today at the three-hour preview for members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. And, of course, the shoes were favorites with women. We have a gene for that, you know. Michael wanted his creations to be showy - and believe me, they are - and he says they all developed personalities by the time he was done. One, done in snazzy black and red, reminds him of a friend named June who recently died. One is very Chinoise. One was inspired by the King Tut exhibit. Michael lives in Carlisle and is a graduate of Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, where he studied floral and plantscape design. He also interned for a year at Longwood Gardens. Nothing on his shoes is live or fresh, but they all look remarkably realistic. Except for the fact that the heels in at least one case are 8 1/2 inches. While there may be some young ladies out there who would subject their feet to such torture, you won't find me among them. I just like to look. Ciao!

I love my job. Can I say that again? I LOVE MY JOB. I get to write about so many fun and interesting things. One recent topic was ikebana, always defined as "the ancient art of Japanese flower-arranging." That doesn't begin to cover it but truth is, ikebana is very hard to describe. When you're watching someone put together an arrangement in this way, you think you get it but then ... and that mysterious quality is part of its appeal. Certainly ikebana is about discipline and simplicity, not something we humans know too much about! It's very minimalist, and it celebrates parts of a plant or flower that Americans, especially, often overlook. Spaces between stems are important, for example. Heck, how many traditional Western arrangements even have spaces between stems? So-called "defects" - insect damage, holes, dessication - are considered interesting, not cause for rejection. I don't know, maybe this explains why ikebana so fascinates. Practitioners say it's a soothing art, therapeutic for the concentration and silence it requires and, in the end, for its singular definition of beauty. Fascinating.  This is part of the flower show exhibit of Ikebana International's Philadelphia chapter. Ciao! 

Here's an example of bonsai, the ancient Japanese art of shaping and training miniature and sometimes not so miniature trees and growing them in containers. Aesthetics are all in bonsai, which I learned recently is pronounced bone'-sigh. And while I don't pretend to know much about this form of horticulture, I can appreciate its delicacy and beauty. I walked by this still unfinished exhibit at the flower show and was stopped in my tracks by this tree, which had no ID. But I loved how it's placed and that the opening is round. It looks as if light from the outside is pouring through a portal, surrounding the tree with a dramatic aura. I love, too, that the tree stands by itself in a hall of windows that by tomorrow will be filled but for now are open and airy, almost like a museum. So I've learned a little about lighting and placement of plants or trees, if you wish to draw the eye to one thing. Nothing wrong with standing alone, whether in the window or in front of a tree. Ciao!

This is the Men's Garden Club of Philadelphia's entry for 2009 ... "Evening Wine in the Garden." These guys do it right. They don't take themselves too too seriously. They have a ball! Today they were hammering and planting and eating hoagies and doing, I suspect, just a wee bit of tippling. Just a hunch. The club's John Young tells me that as soon as they all heard Italy was the show's theme, "We thought, gee, Italy .. wine .. that sounds good!" The call went out for members to save their old wine bottles for the exhibit. By mid-February, the drive was called off. Members were bringing old bottles in by the caseload. Inside the exhibit tower, there are about 1,000 old bottles. The scene also has three wooden casks, a serene garden with white lights and a pergola. Props will include breads, cheeses and meats for the feast that's about to take place. This is the club's 20th year in the show - I can hear the wine corks popping now - and these guys are always a favorite. They are 180 strong (with waiting list .. imagine!) and while most of them aren't what you'd call true horticulturists, a few are and that's enough. The rest of them are hard workers who like to have fun, which is what most of us are out there in the garden. Perhaps that's their appeal. We can certainly relate. Ciao!

I've just spent four hours gawking at the Flower Show as it's coming together. The convention center is literally abuzz with machinery. It smells like fresh soil - love it, though some convention center workers are wearing masks to keep the dust out. There's water on the floor and containers and flats everywhere ... buckets of tulips, piles of pussy willows, rock music blasting, heavy equipment zooming around. It's busy, as always on the day before the preview, but the mood is somewhat subdued this year compared to other years. Everyone is waiting to see if the crowds show up. The horticultural society, which manages the show, says advance ticket sales are running ahead of the last two years but then, oh no, the weather forecast for Sunday looks dicey. That old wintry mix is on the way with temperatures in the 30's. I have to go to the show - tough job...someone's gotta do it - but even if I didn't, I'd go. This year, maybe it's me, but there seems to be a bit more creative stuff going on (more on this later), along with the traditions for which this show is famous. This photo is of the central feature, Roman gardens, done by J. Cugliotta Landscape/Nursery. It's a formal garden with many of the things Italian gardens in the Renaissance had -- elegant water features, statuary, trees, columns. This photo shows the huge - and I mean huge - urns in front that workers on ladders were filling as I left. You can't see the base of the urn. I couldn't get it all in the picture. Ciao!

I'm here at the Pennsylvania Convention Center to check on the flower show setup. Sam Lemheney, the show's designer, is amazingly calm. This is sort of like Christmas Eve in Santa's workshop, the day before lift-off for NASA and every other stressful metaphor you can think of. I'm in the media tent just outside the show hall, but like the rest of what's happening here, it's not quite set up yet. Walking in, I didn't get that trademark whiff of hyacinths that signals the start of show week. Instead ... and maybe I'm imagining this, given the Italian theme, I swear I smelled meatballs. No kidding! I walked by DiBruno Brothers, who are setting up shop on the bridge, and it really did smell like a meatball sub. Gotta check that out later! Meanwhile, I'll take a cruise through the show and come back later to let you know how it's going. Ciao!