Flower power: Little Flower High School held its first Junior Flower Show. More than 100 Little Flower students competed in five categories, including botanical illustrations and potted plants.
The 2017 Philadelphia Flower Show will take place March 11–19 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch streets.
The theme is Holland: Flowering the World.
The event will showcase the plants, creativity and talent of the region’s top horticulturists and designers along with landscape and floral designers from the Netherlands.
The Dutch presentation will feature towering windmills, ecodomes, canals, eco-design, cut-flower and bulb markets and a rainbow landscape of tulips, hyacinths and daffodils.
Leading designers from Holland — including Nico Wissing, Bart Hoes, Bart Bresser and New Jersey-born Carrie Preston — will share their floral and garden styles in major exhibits at the Flower Show.
“We are thrilled to have these stars of Dutch garden design working with our award-winning Flower Show designers on the exhibits,” said Sam Lemheney, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Chief of Shows & Events. “This Flower Show will inspire guests with new ways of thinking about gardening in a changing world, and dazzle them with the colors and creativity of Holland’s floriculture.”
Locally, the horticultural society has partnered with the Connelly Foundation to enable Little Flower Catholic High School to hold its first Junior Flower Show. More than 100 Little Flower students competed in five categories, including botanical illustrations and potted plants, as part of the horticultural society Junior Flower Show.
Among those participating in the show will be LF senior Makayla Hayward, winner of the Botanical Illustrations category, and juniors Corine Roonan and Madelyn Elliott, winners in the Succulent Terrarium category.
“We are so grateful to the Connelly Foundation for partnering with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society,” said Sister Donna Shallo, IHM, president of Little Flower. “Our art and science students enthusiastically embraced participating. Mid-January, the entire school community was treated to the flowering bulbs and the colorful artwork displayed in the cafeteria. It certainly brightened up those dreary January days.”
Horticultural society events manager Johanna Schoeller visited Little Flower to judge the competition.
“The judges were overwhelmed with the over 100 artistic and horticultural entries on which the students worked so hard,” she said.
The Flower Show, first presented in 1829, attracts about 250,000 people a year. It will cover 10 acres of convention center exhibition halls.
Proceeds from the show support the greening and beautification work of the nonprofit Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.
For information about the Flower Show or to purchase tickets, call 215–988–8899 or visit theflowershow.com. ••
