Mum’s the word at Longwood Gardens, one of the Philadelphia area’s premier horticulture conservatories. There are ten days left to check out the annual Chrysanthemum Festival that is taking place right now through November 18. Don’t miss the largest Thousand Bloom Chrysanthemum in North America with over 1,339 white flowers on one stem!
Step inside the Longwood Gardens conservatory and experience mums in the garden like never before, with award-winning chrysanthemum varieties such as Spoon, Spider, Exotic, Anemone and more. You’ll find mums growing in unique designs, including tall cloud forms, 13-foot arches, ball standards, shields, and more. The conservatory features over 20,000 blooming chrysanthemums grown in extraordinary ways, including grafting mums. Longwood's gardeners have used new innovations and horticultural techniques to grow thousands of beautiful, colorful, and unique mums, while preserving an ancient art form.
Longwood Gardens has been growing chrysanthemums for exhibition since 1921, and held its first month-long Chrysanthemum Festival in 1981. The Thousand Bloom chrysanthemum style was incorporated into the display in 1995. The Thousand Bloom (known in Japan as Ozukuri) originated in China and Japan more than 200 years ago; and it is the most exacting and difficult of all the Chrysanthemum training styles, with the goal of growing a single chrysanthemum that produces 1,000 perfect blooms.
The exact growing technique takes 18 months and involves meticulous watering, pinching and tying of the Chrysanthemum to a customized frame to get the plant to grow into the desired form. After a wilting period to allow the stems to become more malleable, the blooms are meticulously arranged in a dome shape, with the goal of achieving as many uniform blooms as possible. Longwood Gardens’ team of growers is led by Yoko Arakawa, who has trained in Japan with the master chrysanthemum growers and continues to travel to Japan to advance her understanding of this rare art form. (1)
Chrysanthemum is a relative of lettuce, endive, and sunflowers. Here in the Philadelphia region, the mum is one of the most popular fall-blooming perennials. Whether you visit a garden nursery or a supermarket, you’ll see mums gracing the store fronts. The word Chrysanthemum derives from two Greek words; chrysos (gold) and antho (a flower) meaning golden flower. Although chrysanthemums are considered perennials, not all varieties come back; especially if we have a hard winter in the Philadelphia region. Here are some truly hardy mum varieties that won’t let you down such as Ryan’s Pink, Venus, Will’s Wonderful, Clara Curtis or Sheffield Pink.
Today’s chrysanthemums are much showier than their wild relatives. The flower comes in single or double blooms. They can be daisy-like, buttons, or pompons. They grow from 1 to 4 feet; they need full sun, and rich, well-drained soil with a neutral to acidic pH. Pinching the blooms around the 4th of July will keep them from becoming leggy and will help them produce abundant blooms in September and October. Remember when purchasing; buy the mums that have closed buds and buds that are two-thirds open so that they will last longer. Chrysanthemums can also be planted in fall containers along with ornamental peppers, ornamental kale or cabbage,
Philadelphia weather forecasters predict nice weather for the next week, so get out and plant some mums, or visit Longwood’s Chrysanthemum Festival featuring 20,000 blooming chrysanthemums inside their 4-acre conservatory, there’s only ten days left.
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