PHILADELPHIA >> This year’s Philadelphia Flower Show will have visitors taking a step across the ocean with the theme “Holland: Flowering the World” that is sure to offer activities and adventures for attendees of all ages.
For the buildup to the show, there will be the annual Bloom Philly Festival, the regionwide event that’s designed to “break out of the winter doldrums and celebrate the coming of spring,” as the Bloom Philly Festival webpage reads in part.
Among the activities for this year’s Bloom Philly Festival will be a decorating contest that runs from Feb. 25 to March 19. Area businesses will decorate their windows, lobbies and offices for the weeks leading up to and during the flower show.
The second confirmed event for the Bloom Philly Festival will be a Dutch Watercolor Class at the Philadelphia Art Museum March 1 between 5 and 8 p.m. The museum will host a painting class that is inspired by Dutch painting for the museum’s permanent collection.
At the Flower Show, one of the new attractions this year will be a Garden Spa.
This spa will be a room on the concourse where for an extra fee you can go in and enjoy a massage. Visitors can also create different kinds of potpourri.
“It’s going to be a wonderful way to relax and be pampered a little bit,” said Alan Jaffe, director of communications for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. “The Flower Show, of course, covers a total of 33 acres, 10 acres of exhibition space and then another 23 acres of all of the satellite activities, so it’s a lot of ground to cover. People get tired. They want to take a break. The Garden Spa is a beautiful way to do that. They’ll go in, relax, get refreshed and be ready to go out and see more of the show.”
The Ecodome also will make its North American debut.
“We have, for the first time in North America, the Ecodome,” Jaffe said. “This is a structure that was created last year in Amsterdam for the gathering of the European Union leaders.”
Jaffe said the dome, designed by Nico Wissing, was designed to showcase the green technologies and the green thinking of the Dutch designers and to show the rest of Europe the newest sustainable practices. It was broken down into about 100 pieces and shipped to the United States.
The dome will be reconstructed in the main hall and will be 36 feet high and 70 feet wide.
Inside the dome, Jaffe said, visitors will see the latest in green sustainability technologies including food production.
“That is going to be a huge attraction this year,” Jaffe said.
Another major attraction will be the entrance garden.
Jaffe said with this year’s theme, the entrance garden will be a recreation of an urban theme with the countryside of Holland. Within that garden, there will be some 30,000 tulips.
There will also be a giant floral canopy that will hang from the convention center ceiling and will have some 5,000 or 6,000 flowers hanging above the heads of those people passing through.
There will also be displays highlighting the art and even the bicycle culture of Holland.
“There will be a lot of ideas for people to take home, to make their gardens more sustainable, greener, and they will get some terrific ideas about the different kinds of tulips and bulbs that are in the market now. Holland is one of the few countries that is known for its floral industry. When you think of Holland, you think of flowers. They do amazing verities and hybrids, and it will be demonstrated throughout the show,” Jaffe said.
