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.