On Tuesday morning, Susan LeBoutillier was standing near a six-foot-tall pile of dark brown sawdust, her bundled shrubs and trees scattered nearby.

“It’s coming along,” she said. “I think the stone walls are very beautiful.”

It was the second day of a five-day work week for her 10-person crew from Exton, building a patio display at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Toward the front of the Convention Center, a huge replica of an Irish castle stood, the welcoming display of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, producer of the show.

It was the first completed display, and it seemed out of place amid the buzz of saws, whirring of fork lifts and the beeping of dump trucks backing up.

LeBoutillier is president of Waterloo Landscaping Inc. by Design, on Whitford Road north of Route 30 in Exton, the companion firm of Waterloo Gardens in Devon.

“We’re focusing on a Celtic symbol, the spiral,” such as the one “found in a Bronze Age design in an old temple,” she said, because such a design “symbolizes the spiral of life.”

Her small plantings, including rhododendrens and azaleas, were still in a Waterloo hothouse, being forced into the unnatural bloom that makes winter shows so appealing.

The Waterloo entry marks a rebirth, because only last year did the family firm return to the show after 12 years.

LeBoutillier’s maternal grandparents, Anna and James Paolini, opened Waterloo Gardens in 1942 in Devon.

After her grandfather stopped showing, “my father did it for about 25 years.” Then he stopped because “he’d just been doing it so many years.”

Last March, she returned because “after 12 years of experience,” in Waterloo’s landscaping business, “I felt like I was up for the challenge.”

LeBoutillier lacked any family advantage over other entrants, because she never had worked with her father or grandfather on their displays.

She seems to have learned.

It’s obvious that a scene should look pretty, she said, but it’s important to display what visitors later might buy – such as a fire pit in her patio.

“That’s the whole idea of the Flower Show,” she said. “Advertising. Nobody is doing it for the fun of it.”

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In Exton, the landscaping firm’s electric bill itself might have glowed in the dark these last few months.

Big lights. Long hours.

It’s what one might see driving along a dark country road in winter – a bright light in a window where a home gardener is trying to force a plant to bloom out of season.

At Waterloo since mid-January, you could walk into one of the retail greenhouses normally closed off in winter and see a huge plastic tent.

Open a flap and plants were lined up inside.

The air was cool, in the 50s.

“Here we have plants being pulled out,” from the tent, she said one day in late February, “because they were moving along too fast.”

Moving is a gardeners’ term, meaning that a plant is approaching bloom. Pushing and forcing mean that the gardener is moving the plant toward bloom.

Among those cooling their roots in the space between the two tent flaps was a tree peony.

“I dug it up from my grandfather’s home,” she said. “I’m not sure it’ll make it to the show.”

About six feet tall, the peony was already flowering, as were a few other plants there. She was trying to slow them down before more buds would open.

“I never tried to force a tree peony,” she said, “so my timing is off now.”

Inside, the tent seemed a makeshift hothouse. In the day, it was 80 degrees; at night, 60.

When she walked outside the tent again, she stopped at several pots of pieris Japonica, an evergreen shrub whose branches were bending sadly.

“I’m unhappy with how they’re looking,” she said, rethinking whether they would be in the show.

“One problem after another,” she said. “It’s a learning curve.”

If You Go

Where: The Philadelphia Flower Show is held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch Streets. The Waterloo exhibit is in Hall A.

Hours: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and next Sunday, 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. tomorrow through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets:Single tickets for adults, bought at the door, cost $28 today, $24 weekdays, and $26 Saturday and next Sunday. Tickets for children ages 2 to 12 cost $13 all days.

Advance tickets for any day cost $22 for an adult and $12 for a child and are available at www.theflowershow.com and at local businesses listed on the show’s phone line, below.

More information:Visit www.theflowershow.com or call 215-988-8899 for a recording.

source : www.philly.com