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Waterfalls of Flowers Highlight Smith's Annual Chrysanthemum Show
Editor's note: For a high-res digital image of the mum show, e-mail MHobbes@email.smith.edu.
NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—As fall colors fade outdoors, a riot of color is unfurling indoors at the Smith College Botanic Garden’s Lyman Conservatory. A popular college and community tradition since the early 1900s, Smith’s annual chrysanthemum show features a variety of multicolor blossoms, including flowers resulting from the hybrids made by the previous year's horticulture class.
The exhibit is open daily from Saturday, Nov. 5, to Sunday, Nov. 20, from
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. Parking is available on College Lane during the show.
Kicking off this year’s show will be a lecture, titled “Modern Day Plant Hunters,” by Bobby Ward at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, in Seelye Hall 106. Ward, author of “The Plant Hunter’s Garden: The New Explorers and Their Discoveries,” will profile today’s prolific plant hunters and provide an overview of the plants collected or introduced in the post-Cold War era of plant hunting.
Following the lecture, there will be a reception and preview of the chrysanthemum show in the illuminated Lyman Conservatory. All events are free and open to the public.
Highlighting the display are the cascades—chrysanthemums grown in the Japanese manner on a flat surface and hanging down several feet from the edge of the pot. In bloom, the cascades appear as a waterfall of flowers lining the side of the greenhouse.
Also featured this year will be an extraordinary arrangement of chrysanthemum “standards,” which are oversized blooms growing atop plants as tall as seven feet. The flowers, in a variety of unexpected shapes and colors, have been “coaxed” to their unusual size by removing all the side buds as the plants grow.
For more information, call the Botanic Garden at (413) 585-2740 or visit https://www.smith.edu/gardens/home.html.
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Office of College
Relations
Smith College
Garrison Hall
Northampton, Massachusetts 01063 |
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Marti
Hobbes
News Assistant
T (413) 585-2190
F (413) 585-2174
mhobbes@email.smith.edu
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