Behind the scenes at the Philadelphia Flower Show, where a majestic floral world emerges

When Seth Pearsoll envisioned his design for the entrance garden of this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show, he imagined an enchanting oasis of terraced flower beds, tranquil reflecting pools, and pink puffs of flower petal clouds.

Pearsoll, the show’s creative director and vice president, spent a year bringing his garden vision to life. It was a design journey that began even before last year’s Flower Show wrapped. One that included a vast network of contributors, stretching from Philly to Holland and Kenya, who grew the garden’s 75,000 fresh-cut flowers, 15,000 plants, and 25 trees, and helped construct its colossal floral sculptures. All to create a single, stunning garden.

“It’s a whole band of creatives that come together to make this real,” Pearsoll said of his garden.

The Philadelphia Flower Show is a majestic, immersive plant world that blooms to life every year, a mosaic of countless clusters and tiny floral touches, and the combined effort of thousands of professional and amateur gardeners, designers, artisans, vendors, and volunteers.

That shared passion “is the essence of the Flower Show,” said Matt Rader, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which has produced the show since 1829. “The show represents an incredible breadth of horticultural creativity both locally and far beyond.”

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From the greenest grower to the most veteran vendor, each has their own Flower Show story to tell — those tiny seeds of inspiration sprouted into an obsession familiar to even the most casual backyard green thumb. But especially to those whose creations — from plant life to arrangements to jewelry and photography — will be on display for the expected crowd of nearly 200,000, and the sharp eyes of the show’s 326 judges.

Pearsoll knows more than anyone that every garden poses unique challenges. His latest offering is a kaleidoscope of color, artistry, and nature, its reflection pools a metaphor for the show’s theme, “United By Flowers.” He adorned the garden and its sculptures with bunches of dark pink Veronica Smart Artists, a striking spike-shaped flower, and Safari Goldstrike, a conebush with bright yellow flowers. He filled the flower beds with nearly 1,000 perennial and annual plants, boldly colored selections with names like White Swans and Dalmatian Rose. He planted 14,155 individual tulips, including elegant apricot beauties, sweetly scented ballerina, and large-blooming rococo varieties.

By far, his thorniest challenge was water. Specifically, the 8,500 gallons filling the ponds, an ambitious design and the show’s largest-ever body of water.

“The slightest little puncture and you got water everywhere,” Pearsoll said.

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Some Flower Show newbies won’t need to fret over their designs. They’ll be too busy helping others create their own.

This will be Maeve “The Flower Mama” Gavin’s first Flower Show since opening a “Build Your Own Bouquet” stand out of a 1959 VW transporter truck she calls Rosebud, after her mother, Rosemary. When the show kicks off, she’ll outfit Rosebud with 3,000 garden roses, eucalyptus plants, and straw flowers, plus 1,968 feet of her signature black and white twine and 1,000 feet of craft paper — and that’s just to start.

“Pick flowers that speak to you,” she’ll tell the crowds.

Gavin, 38, lives in Elkins Park with her husband and three children. She said flowers spoke to her during the doldrums of the pandemic, when she began to grow fresh-cut flowers from seed in her backyard. She was hooked, researching final frosts at the library and trekking out in the middle of the night to cover her tulips and wildflowers with tarps. Soon, neighbors were buying the bouquets she fashioned for their dining room tables.

“I can’t believe I was able to do this,” she said.

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Peggy Nguyen is new enough to the show that she can still track her success through the life of a single plant.

Nguyen, 34, a pharmacist from Upper Darby, will be one of the 985 exhibitors competing in Hamilton Horticourt, the main hall and beating heart of the Flower Show. There, exhibitors compete in over 900 classes or categories, ranging from horticulture and arrangement to design and photography. Not every submission makes the cut. Each is required to meet show standards: Flowering plants must be flowering. No plant can show disease. Plants must meet strict size requirements. Of the 9,173 entries entered this year, only 5,335 passed muster. Judges present hundreds of ribbons, commendations, and sweepstakes awards.

Last year, Nguyen’s Begonia pteridiformis, a fernlike plant bursting with delicate, pink flowers, cleaned up with four ribbons. Judges deemed it an exceptional specimen, remarking on its abundant and healthy leaves.

“Floriferous,” their comments read. “Very nicely grown.”

This year, Nguyen’s prizewinning plant, twice the size and flowering, has stepped up in class, competing in a category of bigger begonias. Nguyen, who is also entering 20 to 30 other plants, is quietly confident.

“I have pretty good attention to detail,” Nguyen said.

She lavishes her plants with constant care, watering them just so, poking around for pests, pinching and pruning, and shifting them in the sun. She finds the floral marathon so rewarding.

“It really is what you put it into,” she said.

Khara Flint, an artist and middle school teacher at Tredyffrin/Easttown in Chester County, measures success by the growing number of students who have joined her Flower Show Club. Flint, 55, had long sold her paintings in the Flower Show’s marketplace. She started showing students how to make art with pressed plants 10 years ago. Now 70 young people fill her classroom most afternoons, pressing flowers in homemade presses and between newsprint and the pages of phone books. With the dried petals, they create textured mosaics that resemble oil paintings, and will be exhibited at the show.

“They find solace and confidence in creating these masterpieces,” Flint said of her students’ entries.

For longtime exhibitors, the thrill of competition can be found in silent exchanges with judges.

For 20 years, Lydia Allen-Berry, a lawyer from Chestnut Hill, has exhibited her stunning miniature arrangements at the Flower Show, each a finely detailed floral universe that can fit in the palm of a hand. Having long ago mastered the mechanics, she works on her award-winning creations for days and weeks with precision drills and brushes. By now, she can hear the judges in her head, knowing nearly imperceptible infractions will cost her. A tiny branch, slightly askew. A pin drop of glue on a flower petal.

After so many shows, she still enjoys the satisfaction that comes with the accomplishment of her art.

“It’s that feeling of awe for the beauty of the design,” she said.

For some show veterans, the marvels of the Philadelphia Flower Show reveal themselves in time.

After 12 years of running the iconic “Butterflies Live!” event, John Dailey describes the 2,000 butterflies that will flutter through his tent like old friends at a party. The zebra longwings are gregarious, happy to land on visitors’ feeding sticks for nectar and sugar water. The morning cloaks are shy and search for a dark corner to hide. The bright blue morphos love to dance, painting the air with color.

For each new batch of butterflies, the Flower Show represents the first flutterings of a new life. They spend the days leading up to the show shedding the last trappings of caterpillar-hood in emergence chambers, which Dailey stores safely in the bowels of the Convention Center.

For Dailey, who is 66 and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, the show represents a rewarding second act. He started his business after a successful tech career. Every year, he likes to steal a few moments just to stand amid the smiling Flower Show crowds that fill his butterfly tent. To take it all in.

“There are very few places where you can go and everyone is happy,” he said.