Philadelphia hosts annual Flower Show.

The Philadelphia Flower Show, the largest flower show in the world, is being held this week from March 3 to March 11 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

It’s exactly as it sounds: an enormous convention hall full of beautiful flowers from all over the world, art made out of flowers and plenty of opportunities for one to purchase some.

Though tickets were $22 for students and $33 for adults, the irreplaceable sights seen throughout the show seem to balance out the heavy weighted price. In addition,  for those over 21, a free wine tasting was included in the price of the ticket.

This year’s theme is “Wonders of Water,” which is a heavy influence on the decor of the room as well as the different art work throughout.

When I first walked into Convention Hall A, I was stepping into the rainforest equipped with beautiful flowers all different shades of blues, reds, pinks and greens.

To make the experience feel even more authentic, audio was playing as we walked through the forest of different birds and bugs chirping as well as the sound of steam and mist in the background.

As I moved through the rest of the convention center, I came across various water themed areas depending on the type of flowers that were showcased. One area was an Asian garden equipped with Buddha statues and a tranquil pond. Another scene was a huge garden of tulips, all different shades with a pool running down the middle. Each scene stuck with the theme of water by incorporating some type of pond or stream, some even had water wheels that were used to generate electricity.

Becca Halfpenny ’20 also appreciated the variety of floral arrangements, especially the wedding displays.

“I thought it [the show] was beautiful, with a diverse range of displays,” Halfpenny said.

The flower show also provided many different stands for entrepreneurs and gardeners to sell their flowers or ceramics to the general public.

“We get over $1000 in sales over the course of 10 days” said Tyson M. Weiss, the owner of Fish in the Garden, a ceramics store in Maine that makes ceramic fish that can be placed in one’s garden for decoration. “We have been coming for eight years…a lot of these things that are selling I actually made back in October, that’s how much we have to prepare for this.”

On top of flowers, the convention also hosted a special butterfly experience. For an extra $5, one could go into a sanctuary full of all different types of butterflies. They even gave us cotton swabs with nectar on them so that we could feed the butterflies and try to lead them to land on our noses.

The Philadelphia Flower show gave me an afternoon full of color, beauty and excitement for those March and April showers to bring May flowers.