Magic in the Air at Talcott Greenhouse

What's amazing about spring flower shows is the way they compress an entire season's worth of blooms into an impossibly short period of time, offering an artificial combination of sights and scents that can't be found anywhere except within the glass walls of a greenhouse. There's nothing quite like stepping out of a blustery late-winter snowstorm into a flower show's riot of color. It's a truly magical experience.

How appropriate then, that the theme for this year's spring flower show at Mount Holyoke's Talcott Greenhouse is “The Magic of Spring.” The display, which opens March 3, will feature a festive top hat centerpiece, constructed by student employee Kate Bailey '02, and a wide variety of spring-flowering plants, including tulips, fragrant hyacinths, narcissi, pansies, anemones, ranunculi, primroses, and more. Although bulbs are prominent, any spring-flowering plants can be included, says Ellen Shukis, director of the botanic garden. She also feels free to include some of the plants that grow in the greenhouse year-round—especially if she sees a great color combination or decides that a particular plant's foliage complements the bulbs well.

In reality, however, there's very little magic involved in creating each year's show. It's actually a long, carefully planned process that begins many months before visitors utter their first oohs and ahs. Work begins the previous June, when Shukis orders the bulbs, and continues in October, when students pot them up and store them in the greenhouse's basement cooler, where they hibernate for several months in the chilly darkness.

During the short midwinter days of January Term, students begin the hard work of bringing the pots upstairs, loading up carts at the building's outdoor cellar door. Then there's a brief lull until February, when the staff and students go into high gear. By Groundhog Day this year, most of the tulip pots were already upstairs, arranged in neat rows on gravel-covered tables in the greenhouse's north room. Some plants were only an inch or so high, their pale yellow shoots just barely poking out of the dark soil, while others—the freesia, for instance—were tall and green.

Geology major Sarah Hale '01, who began working at the greenhouse last summer, potted bulbs last fall and helped bring them upstairs in January, along with sociology major Rebecca Connor '01. Connor has worked in the greenhouse since the summer after her first year; this is her third flower show. “It's always exciting,” she says, adding that she looks forward each year to finding out what the theme will be and seeing what the staff does with it. Both students say they enjoy working at the greenhouse. “It's a great break from the stress of academics,” Connor said. Hale agreed: “It's peaceful.”

This year, students also had an opportunity to help publicize the show. Visiting lecturer Carleen Sheehan's Drawing I and Drawing II students were invited to enter designs in a poster competition. It was intended, Sheehan says, to “give students with an interest in design an experience similar to what one gets in the ‘real world' when working on a commission.” She and greenhouse staff judged the entries, looking for coherent designs that had clear visual imagery relevant to the show's theme. The winning design is by Abigail Burns '04, who will receive a cash prize of $50. Sheehan says the competition will become an annual event.

On a chilly, overcast morning during the last week of February, many pots were already in place and construction of the three-foot-tall top hat, made of wire mesh, garden hose, and duct tape, was under way. Here and there a few daffodils and tulips were already blooming, but the crocuses were still in the basement—because they bloom so readily, they're brought upstairs last of all. According to Shukis, the weather can have a big impact on the show. Cool and cloudy days are ideal, but hot, sunny days will cause the flowers to open and fade too quickly.

By the time this issue of the College Street Journal appears, preparations for the spring flower show will be over, visitors will begin coming through the doors, and the months-long process will come to an end. But it won't be long before the 2002 show gets under way. In June, Ellen Shukis will start ordering from her bulb catalogues—and the process will begin anew.

“The Magic of Spring” opens Saturday, March 3, and continues through March 18. Hours are 10 am to 4 pm daily. On Tuesday, March 6, Lynn Cohen, a sales representative for Sunny Border Nurseries, one of the largest perennial plant wholesale nurseries on the East Coast, will speak about “Exciting and New Cutting-Edge Perennials for the Garden” at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium in the Art Building. And on Thursday, March 8, from 7 to 9 pm, there will be an open house for students featuring refreshments and door prizes.