Oh the Philadelphia Flower Show! The largest indoor plant show in the world. Every year I love flocking to all of the awesome displays and horticultural oddities. While most local garden shows show some pathetically under watered half forced displays. Philly never ceases to have consistent great quality.
Still, something about the show was off for me this year. I didn't really find myself impressed with most of the displays and I definitely didn't find myself impressed with the plant variety. I think I'm going to blame this year's theme. I can see the appeal of naming something Memories of Hawaii, but seeing as I have never been to Hawaii, I don't have memories of ever being there. Maybe this is being a bit nick picky, but there are plenty of other ways this theme down cast the show. Hawaii has an incredibly fragile and unique eco-system. I don't remember hearing what the percentage is of introduced invasive plants, but I remember it being crazy high. Almost everything introduced to Hawaii thrives. So much so that it out competes all of the small micro ecosystems that naturally exist there. And while I'm sure many of the plants presented at the show fit in that category, I kinda found myself just thinking that I was walking around your standard homedepot tropicals.
The show was packed. Insanely so. I might be jaded from hanging around the city all the time, and being in a hurry, but it was agonizingly hard to navigate. Something about the layout this year was just difficult. Forget getting any good pictures of the displays.You can see how close I could get to the main display in picture one.
I also expected most of the plants to be judged by Friday morning when I arrived. I've gotten to the point in my cacti hobby where I want to know who has the best cacti. While I'm sure I know who owned most of those plants, I really wanted to make sure.
Lastly, one of the main reasons I didn't have as much fun as I could have had, no great plants to purchase. Seriously, you go to the biggest flower show in the world and there are only two stands that sell cacti. One is crazy over priced and the other doesn't know what they're selling. Plant retail really needs to get their act together. You don't go to an aquarium show and just buy mystery fish, so why should you have to go to a plant show and buy mystery plant. That's just crazy.
Still I had fun, and I got some shots of plants I wouldn't normally see, but I really hope it is no where near as crowded next year.
