Flower Show Video 2007

Posted by
Barbara M. Martin
Mar 15, 2007

The Washington Post web site offers a (too short !) video taken at this year's 2007 Philadelphia Flower Show and narrated by Adrian Higgins. The shots are colorful and begin to give the feel of attending the show.

In the video, there is an interview with Christopher Woods, the man who designed the central exhibit this year. The theme is "Legends of Ireland" and he explains that in the exhibit he tried to portray 400 years of Irish landscape history. The visitor enters through an arch or wall of living flowers and comes upon an enchanted woodland.

Woods calls it a "theatrical piece" -- and of course it isn't real, it's built indoors under lights in March in Philadelphia! But beyond installing a showpiece garden, he also felt the need to add people to the garden: actors and artists to populate it. He explains that gardens are "fixed and static" and he used the people "to add movement, imagery and myth" to the display.

I am surprised he doesn't think people would enjoy the exhibit as a snapshot in time, that he feels it is not enough to provide a still life arrangement of eye candy wrought in flowers and plants. Instead, apparently now a garden must be a performance piece?

I didn't attend the Philadelphia Flower Show this year, so I can't tell you what the exhibit looked like in real life or if it somehow seemed dull and thus in need of additional distractions to hold the viewer's attention. And maybe adding performers really did augment the overall effect of the garden, and help to reflect the vibrant Irish culture Woods mentions in the interview.

But somehow, I think it is sad that the public is assumed to be unable to enjoy the flower and garden show for what it is, a display of lovely plants in late winter, that that alone is somehow just not enough.

Watch the video of this year's Philadelphia Flower Show and see for yourself. (Free registration required.)

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