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With the Philly Flower Show closing up shop for the year, what’s going to happen to all those flowers?

Don’t worry. The flowers that make it through get donated, repurposed, or composted.

People take photos and videos of the Aphrodite’s Tears display by the Blockhouse Studios at "The Garden Electric" Flower Show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on March 4.
People take photos and videos of the Aphrodite’s Tears display by the Blockhouse Studios at "The Garden Electric" Flower Show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on March 4.Read moreTyger Williams / Staff Photographer

Alas, we must bid adieu to our orchid and blossom flower friends, as the 2023 Philadelphia Flower Show winds down to an end. But, it begs the question — what do they do with all those flowers?

This year’s Flower Show, which ends Sunday, featured elaborate set pieces with chandeliers featuring thousands of tulips, orchids, and daisies, lush jungles filled with tropical foliage, a giant doughnut topped with 800 pink carnations and much, much more.

That’s a lot of flowers to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

We already know that each night in between days of the show, garden designers and caretakers tirelessly look after the plants through forms of flower triage, like removing dead flowers, watering all the plants and manicuring them to prepare for the next day of attendees. But what happens when everything shuts down?

According to the show’s host, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, many of the living materials at the show find new homes. Here’s what we could find out:

  1. Cut flowers and organic materials that can’t be replanted or reused get composted to be used to enrich soil and encourage healthier plant growth.

  2. Plants and flowers that can be replanted or reused go to the horticultural society’s many programs and projects like Meadowbrook Farm, its more than 20 public gardens and its pop-up gardens.

  3. The designers of exhibits and flower vendors take leftover plants back home to reuse or donate to the community.

  4. Pennsylvania Horticultural Society donates hardscape materials like paver stone, bricks, blocks, and other construction materials, plus furniture such as shelving, chairs, and benches to Habitat for Humanity for their projects.

  5. Everything else gets recycled.