Flower Show

SPRING'S CHILLY, wet start hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of Mount Airy Garden Club. Eager to finish a project that began in the fall, the club's 17 members are looking forward to warmer, drier spring days that signal the beginning of gardening season. The club, which has been in existence since 1934, is responsible for many of the gardens that flourish around Mount Airy. A flower garden at the public library, mass plantings of daffodils and daylilies at the Interstate 70 triangle, landscaping at Pine Grove Chapel and seasonal displays at the senior center, library and tourist center are club projects.

Stuffed into a cinderblock high-rise in college, I bought a cheap brandy snifter at the hardware store. It was not so much a drink container (well, not so much) as an elegant vase to hold the wild chicory, dandelion, Queen Anne's lace and other weeds that grew in the cracks in the sidewalks and along the roadside. An empty soup can would have served, but the graceful lines of the glass enhanced the meager wildflower bouquets and raised them to the realm of dormitory chic. "If you've got a really good-looking container, you're way ahead of the game," says Muffin Evander, head of the garden committee at Ladew Topiary Gardens and owner of Cultivated Designs by Muffin in Baltimore.

EACH YEAR, Union Mills Homestead holds its Flower Mart and Antique Show. But this year the celebration will be expanded because this is the year of the Homestead's 200th anniversary."

Carol A. Donovan has been giving parties in Westminster for 10 years without ever wanting the music to stop or the balloons to come down. So it won't be easy for her to move on.City-sponsored parties were continually on the calendar -- Easter egg hunts, teen dances, Concerts in the Park, the Muscular Dystrophy carnival, Fallfest.When no party was scheduled, she thought of one -- the Flower and Jazz Festival, the Daddy-Daughter date, a giant Christmas card in 1985 for President Ronald Reagan that was signed by more than 9,000 Westminster-area residents.

The magnolia has long been declared by both horticulturists and homeowners to be one of the, if not the, most elegant flowering tree for the spring landscape. And with the show they put on this year, it's hard to disagree. With this past winter being such a mild one, it's been a bumper year for blossoms on this magnificent family of trees. One of the showiest magnolias is the saucer magnolia, also known as Magnolia x soulangiana. This is the tree with the huge purplish-pink blossoms that resemble tea cups in both size (the petals can extend outward 8 to 12-inches)

Gardeners are forever looking for something to wrap a flower bed around. There has to be a bed along the front of the porch, and others might be carved out around a garden shed, a birdbath or the trunks of shade trees. For many people, there's another opportunity right out by the curb: the mailbox. A garden bed around a mailbox gives gardeners a chance to put their horticultural stamp where it's sure to show. In the midst of handsome shrubs, interesting ornamental grasses or hard-working annual and perennial flowers, a standard-issue mailbox on a post becomes a piece of functional art. When there's a flower bed to visit, the trip out to the mailbox is much more interesting, even if the postman brings nothing but bills.

Feeling a little winter-weary? Escape from the season of snow and ice to a refreshing look at spring at "Springtime in Paris," the 2011 Philadelphia International Flower Show that begins today at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Featured in "1,000 Places to Visit Before You Die," Philly's flower show is a must-see for flower and garden lovers. Each year, at least 60 florists, professional landscapers and horticultural and educational organizations create breathtaking, full-scale gardens and floral displays.

Elaine Dodd, member of the Joppatowne Garden Club, looks through her garden for specimens to enter in the Joppatowne Garden Club and the Joppa library's Small-Standard Flower Show, "Joppa Past and Present. " The show will be held at the Joppa library, 655 Towne Center Drive, Joppatowne on Saturday, June 1 from noon to 4 p.m. There will be exhibits of plants members and others have grown in their yards and floral designs created to carry out the show's theme. For more information call Ellie Pfoutz, 410-679-4813.

Evelyn R. Brewer, a homemaker and nationally accredited flower show judge, died of pneumonia Dec. 30 at Genesis ElderCare in Severna Park. She was 94. The former Evelyn R. Harvey was born and raised in Abilene, Texas, and attended Abilene Christian University. She was married in 1931 to John H. Brewer, and they moved to Baltimore in 1933. Longtime residents of the Fellowship Forest neighborhood near Towson, they moved to Gibson Island in the 1970s. Her husband, an inventor and former research director for a Baltimore pharmaceutical manufacturer, died in 2002.

A memorial service for Carolyn S. Gorman, an accredited flower show judge and former garden club president, will be held at 4 p.m. today at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, St. Thomas Lane and Garrison Forest Road.Mrs. Gorman, who was 64, died Sunday after a short illness at her home on Chattolanee Hill Road in Owings Mills.The former Carolyn Stettinius was a native of Baltimore who was educated at the Bryn Mawr School, the Westover School in Massachusetts and at Bennington College.In addition to serving as a judge at flower shows, she served as president of the Garden Club of Twenty.