Human Flower Project
Hanoi, VIETNAM
Tokyo, JAPAN
Columbus, Texas USA
Monday, November 03, 2008
New England Flower Show, Not Next Spring
With finances deteriorating, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society won’t hold its 138th flower show next spring. Is this one example of poor management or a more widespread change in “leisure” American style?
Judges Jeanne Leszczynski (clockwise from top left),
Holly Perry, and Sheila Magullion work over an arrangement
at the New England Flower Show, 2008.
Photo: David L. Ryan, for Boston Globe
We’re now back on daylight-spending time, feeling afternoon-deprived. Our sympathies go out to those in New England (we’ll never forget a November there in 1970, the sun going down at what seemed about 3:30 p.m. on the exhibitionists in Harvard Square).
What a tough time for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society to break the news: the Spring Flower Show, a pushback against the long New England winter, has been cancelled for 2009. This would have been the 138th show.
”There’s no sense in doing it if we can’t at least break even,” Betsy Ridge Madsen, president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, said. “This is an economic season in which not only are we having trouble to afford the show we did last year, but a lot of growers are feeling the pinch, as well.”
“Pinch” hardly describes the horticultural society’s situation. Back in 2002, it sold off part of its legacy, rare books and prints worth $5.25 million, to keep in operation. With that major evidence of institutional weakness, donors began withdrawing.