Where you grow your own food for your table
Yard Birds
Adorable, handcrafted, folk art. Yard Birds add whimsical flare to any garden, yard, or entranceway. Click here to find your Yard Bird.
Home Beekeeping
Few gardening-related hobbies are as fascinating and satisfying as raising honey bees. Contribute to the health of your area's honey bee population. Buy this guide to learning bee culture and start your own bee hives.
Garden Chickens
Raise adoring pets that pay you back with delicious and nutritious fresh eggs. This offer provides all the information you need to get started with your own backyard chickens. Click here today to get started in this rewarding hobby.
Kitchen Garden Store
Learn to preserve the produce you grow in your home kitchen garden. This home canning starter kit includes everything you need to can your first batch using the boiling water bath method for high-acid foods. Find it and other canning supplies at the Home Kitchen Garden Store.
Most striking to me of the ultra-embellished exhibits was this long reflecting pool with modernistic light panels and an “alabaster” sculpture at the far end. It would take months to get this installed in your yard, buy I’m guessing the folks who assembled it at the show completed the job in a few days.
My seed-starting shelf is ready for me to start planting my home kitchen garden. I’ve cleared off the canned goods and hung the lights. In the meantime, we’ve had some late winter snow, so I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to attend this year’s Philadelphia International Flower Show.
The show is an indoor oasis in winter. If features many exhibits of all types of plants that experts have tricked into maturing out-of-season. Not surprisingly, there are many, many flowers. Happily, there are also exhibits of vegetable plants. I spent some time at the show on Tuesday and plan to return on Friday.
About the Philadelphia Flower Show
I live about 2 and a half hours from Philadelphia. As I drove 50 miles south, I saw that lawns were sprouting green and it made me a little sad since my town is under about eight inches of snow. The show floor was crowded, so it was pointless to have a destination in mind; deciding to move with the crowd helped keep my stress level low.
There were, of course, flowers at the Philadelphia Flower Show. They scented the air, and some formed eye-catching displays. A few got very close to my camera’s lens.
With all the flowers and other plantings, my favorite ornamentals were succulents and cacti; there were some gorgeous specimens.
The show’s theme this year is Springtime in Paris, and one vendor showing succulents had a sign that read something like, We thought they meant Paris, Texas. That amused me.
If your home kitchen garden is still under snow, please have a look around the Philly Flower Show. I’ve posted a few photos to give you a short respite from the cold.
Thank goodness, someone at the Philadelphia Flower Show appreciates food! The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society had an exhibit of edible plants that included some gorgeous Chinese cabbage. Something the exhibit taught me: when you grow vegetables in your greenhouse intending to transport them to a flower show, don’t plant peas. Pea plants are very delicate, and the ones at the show were more badly damaged than any in my home kitchen garden after the worst storms of spring.
Tulips and flowering trees lead up to base of an Eiffel Tower simulation. There wasn’t enough air space to handle the entire tower, but the structure is pretty convincing when you’re under it in the dim light of the convention hall.
Thanks for the photos! I’ve been so curious about what it looks like down there.
Kari: I’ve hardly done the show justice, but I took a boatload more photos and will assemble a photo album on flickr to post in the near future. I think every reasonably enthusiastic gardener should try to visit this show at least once per lifetime. It’s a very happening place.