Planting Pride with America in Bloom: America in Bloom Plants Pride at the Philadelphia Flower Show

America in Bloom Plants Pride at the Philadelphia Flower Show

Thursday, March 17, 2016 by America in Bloom

America in Bloom Plants Pride at the Philadelphia Flower Show

By Evelyn Alemanni, 1st Vice President

Just like our friends in America in Bloom participating communities all over our nation, America in Bloom was busy planting pride by creating a garden with help from lots of talented volunteers. Just like yours, ours was a special garden. In fact, it was part of the Philadelphia Flower Show which ran from March 4-12. We were so pleased to earn a bronze medal.

The show's theme honored the 100th anniversary of US National Parks. Because they live in Kentucky, our designers chose to interpret a national park in Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln spent part of his childhood.

As the oldest and largest flower show in the US, the Philadelphia Flower Show attracted record attendance of 255,000. AIB volunteers were out in force to greet these garden lovers and share the AIB message with them. We are proud to say that we had 41 volunteers from 11 states, all of which covered their own travel costs. These volunteers included AIB judges and board members, people from AIB participating communities, and their friends and relatives.

We could not have created the garden without these generous sponsors:

Proven Winners donated the plants.
Jon Carloftis Fine Gardens helped with the design and setup.
Longwood Antique Woods designed and built a shed from reclaimed lumber that formed the centerpiece of the display garden.
Growit! created a free app that provided information about all the plants in the exhibit.

As anyone who's ever built a garden knows, things don't always go as planned - unexpected challenges occur, and even more unexpected solutions appear. Here's our story.

We started with this rough sketch and a shed concept from Dale Fisher. The design showed the shed location, paths, four trees, four pots for plants, and two window boxes. The rest of the design to be determined later.

Dale recruited his friend, George Gatewood of Longwood Antique Woods, to design and build the shed in his Lexington, KY workshop.

Then he disassembled it to bring it to the show. He loaded it onto his trusty trailer, he realized that there wasn't enough room for the shed and all the other things he had to bring. So of he went to rent a truck to make the 10-hour drive from Lexington to Philadelphia. The delay caused him to arrive in town after 3 a.m. and setup was to start Monday.

Thank goodness he decided to sleep a bit extra, because I arrived at our space on Monday, 10 yards of mulch had been piled exactly where the shed was to be built, and my other volunteers weren't arriving until Wednesday. Yikes!

Before long, our neighbors at the show, the Camden Children's Garden, approached us with a plea for mulch. Their's hadn't arrived and they were desperate. Could they use ours and replace it the next day? Of course! Problem solved by neighbors helping neighbors. Their team of 5 strong young men made quick work of moving the mulch, just as George and his helper, Jamie Bates, arrived with a truckload of shed parts.

Construction begins. George and Jamie made quick work of shed assembly.

Finishing Touch with a Flag on the Cupola

George and Jamie finish their work and leave for Lexington

Plants will arrive momentarily, but first, the paths and garden edging must be installed. We were told this service would be provided, but installers were nowhere to be found, so Sylvia Elchinger, super volunteer from Richmond, VA, bravely took care of the job, installing two pallets of pavers and edgers.

Before plants can be installed, mulch has to be placed. All ten yards! Sylvia gets busy.

Synchronicity! AIB judge and another super volunteer, Ed Hooker, arrives from Maryland just as the plants arrive.

They have special packaging to shield them from the cold wind that is blowing through the shipping

dock doors directly on our space.

Jon and Dale, our garden designers, are enroute from South Carolina and not expected to arrive until Thursday morning. They were bringing the garden design with them, but time is running out. We need to finish the exhibit by Thursday evening, so we text them for permission to install the plants. "Go for it," they replied.

Sylvia, Ed, and Evelyn placed plants until show management closed the doors at 6 p.m. We were nearly finished.

Sylvia Elchinger and Ed Hooker shoveled mulch, laid bricks, and planted pride.

On Thursday morning, our team was complete. Dale and Jon liked what we had accomplished and went on to find items for the finishing touches.

We thought we were done, but the weather turned and bitterly cold wind blew into the convention center. Quickly, we scavenged for large pieces of plastic to cover our plants and prevent them from freezing overnight. The team arrived early on Friday morning to remove the plastic and do final touchups before judging started.

The hard work of garden building was handled by volunteers: AIB judge Ed Hooker from Maryland, AIB 1st Vice President Evelyn Alemanni from California, and her sister, Sylvia Elchinger from Virginia. Two people from Longwood Antique Wood built the shed on site, and Jon Carloftis and board member Dale Fisher helped with final touches on setup. Award-winning garden designer and author Jon Carloftis even made a personal appearance in the garden on Saturday, March 5 to answer gardening questions.