~~~

Tuesday, March 5

~~~

In Part 1 of the Flower Show, I will give some details about the show and our day. In my next entry I will post a lot of beautiful flower pictures.

When thinking about vacations and trips for 2024, we decided to go with bus trips. Cerwin doesn’t enjoy driving on long trips anymore and we have seen many of the places in the USA that were on our bucket list.

Bus trips will allow him to relax while someone else drives and we hope to see some details on the east coast that we have never seen before.

When we saw Esbenshade’s advertisement for the Philadelphia Flower Show, we chose that for our first trip of 2024. It was our first trip to this show.

Apparently, this trip by Esbenshade’s is quite popular. We were on Coach #3.

This was our view of the cars in the parking lot. We were glad the flower show activities were inside. We left Esbenshade’s at 8:00 am as scheduled.

As I viewed the scenery during the two-hour drive, I thought, “This is why the flower show is held in late winter. It gives us hope for spring.”

This was the 195th Flower Show, which is currently held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. It is an annual event hosted by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

It is the oldest and largest indoor flower show in the world, attracting more than 250,000 people annually. Described as “the country’s oldest, largest, and most prestigious celebration of flowers,” the show features large-scale gardens, ranging from elaborate landscaped displays to individual and club entries of prized horticultural specimens. 

The first flower show was held in 1829, and all but the 2021 and 2022 shows were held indoors. Due to Covid-19 the 2021 and 2022 shows were held outdoors at FDR Park during the summertime. The show covers ten acres. Flower and garden related vendors take up about 1/3 of the large room.

Of the thousands of people in the building we only met two people we knew – and that was because we were on the same bus. Orpha Newswanger is Cerwin’s oldest Sauder cousin. Her mother Alice Sauder Newswanger and Cerwin’s mother Ella Sauder High were sisters.

We met Orpha’s friend Jay Yoder at several family gatherings and enjoyed getting to know him a bit better on this trip. We asked someone to take our picture while we were waiting for our bus at the end of the trip. It was interesting that we did not see each other in the large flower show room anytime during the day.

Our three Esbenshade busses were ready for boarding at 2:30 pm.

Parking lot photos from my bus window while driving through Philadelphia.

Our three Elite coaches traveled together.

We arrived at Esbenshade’s about 5 pm – just as scheduled.

Our only purchase of the day (other than food) was this interesting hummingbird feeder. I am anxious to put it out in early May.

I have close to 100 flower photos which I will post in my next entry.