C'est la Vie: It's Sweet at the Flower Show for Haddonfield Gardners

Christine Courtney and Debbie Derkoski have spent months thinking about a little old winemaker. On Saturday, their daydreams bore fruit as they unveiled a window box exhibit at the Philadelphia International Flower Show.

Their project, which Courtney said was designed for competition in the C’est la Vie category for a country flower box, projects a lifetime of memories, in flowers, of a fictional winemaker in France.

With the help of Betsy Gagliardi of Voorhees, the two Haddonfield women looked over offerings from nurseries to pull together plants that carry out the colors of wine: robust and tingly or yellow with a hint of green. The trio are members of the Haddonfield Garden Club, which has participated in competition at the Philadelphia floral spectacular with an occasional break for years.

Their careful work paid off—the women took third place in their category.

In another small class competition, Karey Carpenter, a decorative painter, will team an arrangement on Wednesday and Thursday with a student at Philadelphia University.

The Flower Show, continuing through Sunday March 13 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, is the world’s largest, and first, indoor flower exhibition and showcases the talent of exhibitors from florists and horticultural experts to educational organizations. It’s operated every year since 1829.

The Garden Club’s exhibit will be on display through Tuesday night. Another competing organization will take over the spot on Wednesday, continuing to the show’s end. That exhibit will have the theme C’est la Vie, with a city theme. 

“Last year we did a small backyard,” said Courtney as she took some time off the final assembling of the box in her dining room space, soon to be demolished for a home expansion project. The club also previously prepared a balcony project and an urn presentation. “We were going to take a break this year, then we said, ‘Oh, let’s try this. It’s a small project.’”

Participants for the competition were selected late last spring. “It’s a lot of work,” Courtney said, adding the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society sets a $1,500 limit on spending for live plants and props. “We can’t use something we already have (to meet the budget). We have to sell it back to the garden club and then purchase it from (the club) at a fair price,” she said.

“We didn’t think about it all the time, but some days, at the beach, I’d be daydreaming about plants for our window box," Courtney added.

The colors of wine translate primarily into red and gold to show what the vintner spent his life working on and dreaming about. No cut flowers are permitted in the window box exhibit. Blooming flowers were purchased from Meadowbrook Farms in Abington, PA. “They force some plants, so they’ll bloom at the right time. If we were doing this show in July or August, we’d find plenty of home-grown blooms,” said Courtney, adding then the show wouldn’t be the elixir of spring that it now is.

The arrangement will include some lemon cypress, pale green and white hellebores, deep red African violets, red and yellow roses, begonias, an orchid or two and some herbs like lemon sage, thyme, and maidenhead ferns.

“We may use a wine bottle, but it will have to hold a plant,” said Courtney, about 12 hours before the women would be transporting the exhibit to the floor of the convention center. The wine bottle didn’t make the cut, but a tall container did.

The Haddonfield Garden Club won a blue ribbon last year for its backyard exhibit and also has won awards for balcony displays.

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society pays some portion of the costs of the display ($1,000 for plantings and $500 for incidentals). To cover additional costs, the club taps into its treasury, which raises money throughout the year by events such as a herb sale in May.

Carpenter, 33, who grew up in Haddonfield, worked with an art student for the first time last year. “It was a lot of stress, mostly keeping the flowers alive, refreshed. You learn as you go,” said Carpenter who specializes in murals and faux designs.

“With the Flower Show competition, everyone’s interpretation is different and you don’t know what the judges will like, or what they’re looking for."

Tickets for the Philadelphia International Flower Show range from $26 to $30 depending on the day. A $1 service fee is added to tickets purchased on line through theflowershow.com. Some retailers, including Acme, PNC and Boscov's, also sell tickets.