(title music)
- Hey everybody, I'm Tim Johnson.
I'm the director at the Botanic Garden at Smith College.
I'm really sorry we had to cancel the Bulb Show this year
out of an abundance of caution and concern
for the health of our staff and our community
and our students.
It's a bit heartbreaking.
We've been working on the show for about a year now,
but we wanted to do our best to invite you in,
and so instead of you coming to the Bulb Show,
we're working to bring the Bulb Show to you.
I've got a couple of students here
who've been working on this project with us
for many, many months, and they're gonna show you around
and tell you a little bit about what it's like
to be here today.
- Hi, I'm Bridget.
I'm a junior at Smith,
and I'm a Women and Gender Studies major.
- Hi, I'm Dana.
I'm a senior, and I'm a Biology
and Environmental Science major.
So Bridget, what's your favorite plant
in the show this year?
- I have two. - Okay.
- My first favorite plant is the anemone
because of how beautiful and vibrantly purple it is.
I love the way its inside looks
and how it's kind of spiraling,
and I love the leaf pattern.
My second favorite plant is right over here.
It's these really big red ones
that are just kind of opening up,
and I love how you can see kind of like the stamens
and the pistils and the pollen.
Something about it looks very spring to me.
- One of my favorite plants in the Bulb Show this year
are these tulips that we grow, not for their flowers,
but for the beautiful texture that they grow
on their leaves.
They add a really nice dimension and texture to the show
that really stands out against all of the other plants.
- Another one of my favorite things
about the Bulb Show this year is our use of citrus.
It's kind of reminiscent of an orangery,
and it smells great.
It's really beautiful to see these pops of orange
throughout the show.
Another thing I really love is how we forced plants
and branches from our own landscape.
So for instance you can see that we have
forsythia over here.
So when you walk into the plant show,
and you're trying to get that feeling of spring,
you can really see our own landscape opening up
ahead of time.
- You can see another example of that over here.
We have these beautiful apple blossoms that have been
cut from the landscape and are starting to open up
here in the greenhouses.
Come on, let's head into the other room.
- This room feels overflowing, in a great way.
If you look down the alleys, you can kind of see
how some flowers are cascading off.
It almost looks like a flower waterfall to me.
And putting on the plants on here,
there are many.
Many more than naturally fit on the table, so.
Dana, do you know how many bulbs there are
in the show?
- I do.
There's a little bit over 8,000 bulbs
that go into the show that ends up being
a little under $6,000 that we spend
just on the bulbs.
That's not including any of the pots, or the soil,
or the labor that goes into getting everything started.
That's just how much goes into just getting the bulbs
at the beginning of the show.
- I really love in here
is the detail of the pink flowers
on these camellias, because they add so much height to it
and so as you're looking through these vistas
of bulbs and tulips, you have so many different layers
going on, and it goes so high up.
- One of the biggest things that goes into
getting the show set up is thinking about the different
heights that things are at, because we want you
to be able to see as many things
at the same time as possible.
So in the center here, a lot of these tulips
are up on risers so that they are lifted
a little bit above,
and then a lot of the taller plants,
like the tulips and the narcissuses,
they get tied with strings so that they don't flop over
and that helps so everything stays neat and tidy
and you can see as many things at the same time as possible.
- I kind of want to smell them and try and describe it.
- (giggles) Do it.
- Okay.
I'm gonna smell this one first.
(sniffing)
That one smells really good.
It smells like,
it smells really, really sweet.
It smells like
kind of like a delicate laundry detergent.
It smells really fresh.
- So these small flowers are called muscaris.
They look very small, but they are bulbs
just like all of the other things in the show.
And we like them because they are a lot smaller
than some of the other larger tulips
and hyacinths that we bring in,
and so bringing in that contrast of size
helps to really reflect the diversity
that you see in the Bulb Show.
- You know, as you hear the real spring coming
to fruition outside, you can see it in full bloom
inside at Lyman.
- Coming to the Bulb Show is really
a full sensory experience.
It's what you're seeing, it's what you're smelling,
but it's also what you're hearing
and what you're feeling.
- It's a preview of what's about to be.
(gentle guitar music)
Thank you so much for coming to check out
the Bulb Show with us.
We hope to see you soon.
- Bye!