Flower Show

Michael Bromery sat alone, engulfed in a forest of green, alternately playing a Japanese melody called "Esaka" on his acoustic guitar and self-made bamboo flute against the sound of mini-waterfalls. "People come here to relax and for peace of mind," he said, referring to The Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens of Baltimore, which is hosting its annual Flower Show, a large display of brightly colored tulips and snow-white lilies, through Sunday. There are innumerable reasons why people find pleasure at the conservatory, which was built nearly 120 years ago, as illustrated yesterday by individuals, couples and families who leisurely made their way past thousands of plants and flowers.

A Davidsonville nursery has put on its own version of New York's Fashion Week, but the models are too green to strut down the runway. Fashion in Bloom, a splashy show that opened yesterday and runs through Sunday at Homestead Growers, shows what's hot and what's not to the gardening public and professional growers. The expansive Davidsonville complex, which includes 300 outdoor acres of plants, along with retail and wholesale spaces, is a relatively new division of Homestead Gardens, 2 miles away.

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)

Why is going someplace with you always such an adventure?" It was my daughter's lamentation, expressed at the age of 6, when we got terribly lost going to the Kennedy Center in Washington. It was during our ballet phase. She said it again last year when I took her to the Philadelphia Flower Show. We got terribly lost on the way home, and she huffed at me in too-familiar irritation. But I made the trip to Philadelphia for the flower show with confidence this year, my friend Lisette riding in the seat Jessie had understandably vacated.

THROUGH WEDNESDAY SCULPTURE EXHIBIT See works by Taiwanese sculptor Shin-Yu Wang at the exhibit Distant Visions, through Wednesday at Baltimore Clayworks, 5707 Smith Ave. 410-578-1919 or baltimoreclayworks.org for hours. TODAY THROUGH MARCH 12 PHILLY FLOWER SHOW Travel through more than 10 acres of gardens, attend lectures, watch demonstrations on flower arranging and gardening, browse products from exhibitors and more, at the Philadelphia Flower Show, today through March 12 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch streets, Philadelphia.

At this time of year, when winter hangs on stubbornly, you need not head toward the equator for a sustaining dose of spring. Simply head north to the Philadelphia Flower Show. At 177 years old, it is the oldest, largest and certainly the most ambitious display of horticulture in the United States. Covering 10 acres in the cavernous Pennsylvania Convention Center beginning tomorrow and continuing through next Sunday, the flower show annually attracts more than a quarter of a million garden enthusiasts during its weeklong stay.

Long before 9/11, before war, before yellow ribbons that say "Support Our Troops," and long before red and blue states, the theme for the 2005 Philadelphia Flower Show was chosen. It would be "America the Beautiful," and the patriotic theme would be played out in flowers of red, white and blue. The Philadelphia Flower Show, March 6 to 13 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, is the granddaddy of all flower shows. Now in its 176th year, it is unmatched in longevity, scale, perfection and creativity, and it is such a monumental undertaking that planning begins at least five years in advance.

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.

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.

Just when it seems that winter will never end, when it seems as if the cold grayness will never lift and the world will never bloom again, then comes the Philadelphia Flower Show. For the past 174 years, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has been filling a cavernous arena in the city with millions of flowers, creating not just a late-winter oasis of greenery, but a magical place of beauty and imagination. "It is a spectacle," said Bartie Cole of Green-spring Valley, purveyor of an extraordinary garden of her own, who has been going to the flower show every year for more than a decade.