Philadelphia Flower Show has "Bella Italia" theme | ajc.com - Current & Future Home and Garden Shows

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

PHILADELPHIA — This year, the Philadelphia Flower Show (March 1-8) is doing a little cross-pollination in these wilting economic times.

The upcoming show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, with its “Bella Italia” theme, is adding retail space to the annual show-stopping floral displays and bustling horticultural marketplace, as well as promoting other Italy-related museum exhibitions currently or soon to be in Philadelphia.

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Joseph Kaczmarek/AP

Visitors to the 2008 Philadelphia Flower Show look over winning floral displays.• Read more about upcoming flower shows

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Franklin science museum, in turn, are advertising the flower show in their lobbies with banners and you guessed it flowers. They’re also offering $2 discounts to one museum when a visitor presents a ticket stub from the other.

Arts and culture leaders hatched the partnership as a way to “bring visitors to Philadelphia and bring Philadelphia to the world’s attention” during the economic downturn.

The eight-day flower show, organized by The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and held in Philadelphia since 1829, bills itself as the largest indoor flower show in the world. Roughly 250,000 visitors annually attend the event, which stretches more than 10 acres inside the convention center.

Amid the recreated vistas and lush gardens of northern and central Italy, a replicated piazza will be stocked with Italian products from vino to Vespas and suits to Murano glass a separate area from the yearly retailers of flowers, plants and floral-themed decor.

The show also will cross-promote the art museum’s current exhibition of Renaissance Italian printmakers and upcoming “Cezanne and Beyond,” which includes a couple of Italian artists, as well as The Franklin’s world-exclusive Galileo exhibit coming in April. One of only two known existing Galileo telescopes will be leaving Italy for the first time and Philadelphia is the only venue for the show.

Details at

• www.theflowershow.com

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AJC
72 Marietta Street Northwest
Atlanta, GA, 30303

Email: dfranklin@ajc.com

© 2009 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution