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 by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor
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| Amateur Horticulture entry clerk Pat Beirne checks in a plant. |
Through the miracle of modern computer technology, I am writing this while knee-deep in mulch. Allow me to say it is an exhilarating experience, especially at the end of an interminable New England winter.
I am in this mulch because I am part of what is called 'the build' for the Boston Flower & Garden Show, which opens today at the Seaport World Trade Center. 'The build' is one of those phrases you learn when you hang around these places. It is the term of art for the three days of frenzy that precedes the opening of the show.
Imagine: on Saturday morning, the exhibit hall floor was 100,000 square feet of bare concrete. On Wednesday morning at 9 a.m., the show is going to open. In between, an awful lot has to happen.
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| Miniature Gardens co-chair Debi Hogan shows her design to horticulturalist Jill Nooney. |
By 10 a.m. Saturday morning, the first exhibitors had started to construct 'kickboards' - another term of art for the wood or stone structure that defines a garden and hold in all that mulch. By Saturday afternoon, two dozen exhibits were at various stages of construction. Work continued well into the evening.
By Sunday morning, work was at full tilt on every exhibit and even know-nothings like myself were pressed into service to do things like…. well, move mulch. Around me, professional crews and Master Gardeners had the enviable tasks of placing plants and 'grooming' - making every leaf on every plant look perfect. Me? Have shovel will travel. Every exhibit starts with many, many cubic yards of dark brown mulch. Trees, still in their burlap or metal cages and fresh from six weeks of life in an 80 degree, 100% humidity greenhouse, go into the mulch at a prescribed depth. Moving mulch and wading around in it may not seem glamorous, but it is the bedrock upon which even the most eye-catching exhibit is built.
By Tuesday afternoon, when the judges come round to the exhibits to eye them for ribbons, the mulch I moved will be hidden under a sea of tulips, ferns, and perennials. The mulch will have been 'top-dressed' with compost, the better to hide what binds all this beauty together. But I will know what I contributed.
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| Master Gardener Doris Shields outs the finishing touches on the Mass Hort exhibit. |
The garden exhibits are just one side of the making of a flower show. Blooms!, Mass Hort's contribution to the Boston Flower & Garden Show, is a mass of humanity on Sunday. Trucks loaded in a rainstorm on Friday are carefully taken apart in the controlled climate of the trade center. For every item there is a destination: wooden risers and tiered shelves for amateur horticulture; wooden panels and rolls of felt for the photography exhibit; and cylinders and cubes of every description for the floral design competitions. A few hours later, the same volunteers who lugged wooden frames off trucks will be fitting together those panels to form large and small bays window displays. A few hours after that, plant societies and garden clubs will be populating those exhibits with wonderful specimen plants.
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| Plant society structures get a final inspection. |
What we see when we go to the flower show is a finished product… a finely tuned exhibition designed to look effortless. When you go to the show, try to keep in mind the hundreds of volunteers who make Blooms! possible. Behind every plant is someone who placed it there - arranged it so that 75,000 people could enjoy it, even if only for a moment.
Above all, come on down for the show. It's beautiful!
Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. We encourage you to read his contributions to our In the Gardens Blog where he focuses on interesting cultivars that can found in the Elm Bank gardens. Neal's first novel, Murder Imperfect, was published last year; his second, The Garden Club Gang will be published in March. You can learn more about them here or order them through Amazon.com.
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