PHS to Salute National Parks at 2016 Philadelphia Flower Show

Yosemite National Park | Mikhail Kolesnikov/Shutterstock.com

After a nod to Tinseltown last year, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) has decided to go with an even more wholesome, distinctly American theme for its 2016 Philadelphia Flower Show: a salute to our national parks.

“Explore America” will celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service, with floral displays drawing inspiration from our 408 national parks—every place from Cape Cod and Valley Forge to Yosemite and the granddaddy of them all, Yellowstone. The displays will include flora and fauna indigenous to these landscapes, so expect wildflowers, desert plants, greenery from towering redwood forests and fragrant pinelands, the whole shebang.

PHS Chief of Shows & Events Sam Lemheney explains in a press release that the show was selected by the National Park Service as an official centennial event, and they’re planning to go all out to bring the  national park experience to the Convention Center.

The show will begin in a Big Timber Lodge modeled after wood-and-stone architecture typically found in national parks. It will be “enhanced by Native American art, sculpted animals, floral totems, and a dazzling waterfall,” reads the release. “Spectacular imagery spanning the breadth of the park system will come to life on multiple overhead screens, as sounds of thundering bison and songbirds transport visitors into the wild.”

More highlights from the release layout what you can expect from there:

• “In the ‘Find Your Park’ pavilion … families can meet Park Rangers from around the country in person and by webcast, explore parks and gardens throughout the U.S. and in their own backyards.
• “Guests will climb a mountain, ford a stream, hike trails, and pitch camp in the exhibits and a variety of special events.”
• A new Train Garden features “a vast display of model locomotives and rail cars rumbling through the familiar sites of a miniaturized American landscape.
• A “Base Camp,” in the Convention Center’s Grand Hall, “will be an indoor playground of attractions, shopping and dining, including climbing walls, live music, and wine tastings.
• There will be a pop-up beer garden.
• The Butterfly Experience returns! “An opportunity to interact with domestic and exotic varieties.”

The 2016 Philadelphia Flower Show takes place March 5-15, 2016.