ARTiculture: The Philadelphia Flower Show

The Philadelphia Flower Show, which for the last decade or so has used geographic locations for their thematic inspiration, is going in a radically different direction. This year’s show (March 1-9) celebrates “ARTiculture” — where art meets horticulture.

“Artists have always been inspired, not just by nature, but by horticultural design,” says Alan Jaffe, director of communications for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the organization to produces the flower show. Monet’s gardens at Giverny are the most famous example, of course, but other Impressionists, like Renoir, and Postimpressionists, like Matisse, painted their gardens as well.

With ARTiculture, the PHS is flipping that relationship on its head and letting art inspire horticulture.

“The Flower Show has always had a certain place for art, but nothing on this scale,” Jaffe says. “This is a giant mash-up” in which exhibitors were partnered with 18 different art museums. The results show the wide variety of ways that inspiration can strike.

“Stoney Bank Nurseries [of Glen Mills], for instance, partnered with the Brandywine River Museum, best known for its collection of three generations of the Wyeth family,” Jaffe says. “When the designers went and looked at the paintings, they noticed the sycamore trees in many of them, so sycamores will have a great presence in the exhibit.” Other exhibitors were inspired by a museum’s building and grounds, such as Burke Brothers of Wyndmoor, who partnered with the Getty Museum to create an exhibit inspired both by the Getty’s well-known gardens but also Cubism.

“Most of the museums invited the designers to come in and look around,” Jaffe says. “Curators might talk about particular artists or point out specific works of art. In the end, though, the exhibitor went with whatever had the most impact on them.” The result, he says, is “lots of very interesting collaborations. The designers took things in a lot of different directions. They’re not only expressing themselves, they’re presenting new ways of focusing on how the two [art and horticulture] interlink and are interdependent.”

The exhibitor partnerships aren’t the only way the Flower Show will be celebrating art. Bank of America, the show’s exclusive sponsor, will be showing Andy Warhol’s seldom-seen flower prints. There will also be four pieces of contemporary sculpture from the West Collection in Oaks.

Perhaps the most dramatic installation, though, will be the entrance garden. “When visitors first come in, we want to knock their socks off,” Jaffe says. The multidimensional tribute to Alexander Calder will do just that. “It will feel like you’re walking not just around, but through, one of Calder’s mobiles,” he promises. True to Calder’s exuberant spirit, Bandaloop, the pioneering vertical dance troupe, will be performing six times a day in the entrance garden.

The PHS Philadelphia Flower Show, March 1-9, 2014. The Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch Streets, Philadelphia. theflowershow.com