This University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Spring Flower Show opens Saturday with mushrooms and magic fairy houses for its new “Enchanted Forest” theme.
With the help of local artists and mycologists (mushroom experts, for the uninitiated) the arboretum has put together a new flower show meant to fill attendees with a sense of wonderment for the processes of the natural world, the arboretum’s Director of Horticulture & Collections Jared Rubinstein said.
The show will feature plants and fungi at all stages of their lifecycles, Rubinstein said. Decaying logs, bulbs with shoots just emerging and flowering adult plants, among others, all are interspersed with artist-crafted fairy houses and other amusements.
“There’ll be a woodland scavenger hunt for kids,” Rubinstein said. “[And] some of the more whimsical elements mixed in with this idea about the natural cycle of life.”
You can see the flower show at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska Saturday through March 16, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The show will close at 6 p.m. starting March 9.
There also will be three After Hours With the Flowers events on Feb. 21, 28 and March 7 where you can enjoy a nature-themed board game and drinks from the margarita bar. The bar will even have two specialty cocktails — the Primrose Collins and the Hibiscus Twist. After Hours With the Flowers will run 6-9 p.m., tickets $20 for the public, $10 for members.
Every week, a new florist will come in and add new cut flowers to the show, replacing and composting the flowers from the week before, arboretum signature events coordinator Wendy Composto said. The flower show is a great opportunity to support the arboretum, learn more about flowers and fungi, and escape the dreariness of winter.
“We do have somebody talking about houseplants, but we also have someone talking about orchids,” Composto said. “Last year, that was a standing-room-only crowd.”
