Behind the scenes at Temple’s award-winning Flower Show exhibit

Each year, using fauna they grow themselves, the students, faculty and staff in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture’s landscape architecture and horticulture programs use the Philadelphia Flower Show to create an exhibition that dazzles visitors from around the world.

This year, they were inspired by the Flower Show’s theme of “United by Flowers” to tell the story of Philadelphia’s Pennsport neighborhood. The section of South Philadelphia that lies on the banks of the Delaware River hosted the first United States Naval Yard starting in the 1770s and has a long history as a shipping port for coal, sugar and other goods.

Months of hard work—designing, growing, constructing and installing—culminated in Piers, Progress and Processes: Charting a Course for a More Bountiful Future, which recounts the maritime history of the neighborhood while reimagining how the river can be reunited with the community in the future.

The exhibit was awarded six of the Flower Show’s top honors: the PHS gold medal, which is awarded to major exhibits that receive at least 95 out of 100 points in the “criteria of design, horticulture, plantsmanship and educational value,” as well as The Bulkley Medal of the Garden Club of America, The Alfred M. Campbell Memorial Trophy, The Pennsylvania Landscape Nursery Association Trophy, Special Achievement Award of The Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania and The PHS Gardening for the Greater Good Award.

A part of Temple University’s Ambler Campus, Tyler School of Art and Architecture’s landscape architecture and horticulture programs have a long tradition of success at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Last year’s exhibit, The Power of Nature—Plug Into It, also won six top honors, and Ambler Campus and Temple’s Ambler Arboretum have been winning awards at the Philadelphia Flower Show for over a century.

The team behind the exhibit consists of students in Tyler’s Landscape Architecture Junior Design-Build Studio as well as some other horticulture students. Since Temple is one of only a few exhibitors that grows its own plants for its exhibit, the Flower Show is an invaluable opportunity for students to get hands-on experience in every aspect of landscape design, showcased to hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world.

More than 500 plants from 60 different species were prepared for the exhibit. To mirror the current state of the Delaware River, plant species used were native to the area, including elderberry and skunk cabbage, but students also chose to use non-native invasive species that have appeared in recent years.