Philadephia Flower Show March 1st - 9th 2014

I have gone and done it, I have booked tickets to the Philadelphia Flower Show, and not only admission tickets, but tickets to attend the Afternoon Garden Tea.

Just got tired of cold and snow and cold and snow and dullness, on top of flu which has gone to bronchitis, so in a month I should be fit for the rigor of a Flower Show.

I have not been to the Philly flower show in absolutely years and this is an amazing event.  Rob is coming with me and he has not been since he was a little boy and we were into Bonsai Trees, so I took him down to especially see that section.  It's right on our door step and is the largest and oldest in the world.

Quote from The Telegraph.

Pennsylvania is home to a flower show that is both older and bigger than Chelsea - and held 10 weeks earlier, says Joanna Fortnam. And, while plants need to be forced to be ready, visitors need no pushing to attend.
 

We like to think of Chelsea as the greatest flower show in the world, but it can't claim to be either the oldest or the largest. It is beaten on both counts - and this may surprise you - by an event held each year in early March, in the north-east of the United States. The Philadelphia Flower Show is more than 175 years old; Chelsea, originally known as the Great Spring Show and first held in Kensington in 1862,..... Philadelphia attracts 300,000 visitors in an eight-day run; Chelsea limits itself to just 157,000 over five days.

For many Americans, "Philadelphia" is synonymous with the flower show in just the same way that for many Britons, "Chelsea" means only one thing. The brutally early timing, .....- also makes the American show a much greater horticultural challenge. All manner of rare and difficult plants must be forced into perfect bloom in late winter. No one, however, could be more ready for this challenge than the gardeners of the Delaware Valley, the location of many of Philadelphia high society's grand homes, led by the estates of the Du Pont family at Longwood, Nemours and Winterthur.

Christy