April Showers Bring Macy's Flowers

Macy’s Herald Square (Photo: NYCfoto)

Every year, Macy’s Herald Square celebrates spring and transforms it’s main floor into a virtual garden. The annual event starts around the end of March and lasts two weeks.

I was fortunate enough to be in New York City in 2004 when the 30th Annual Macy’s Flower Show opened. “Water and Color” was the theme, and the show did not disappoint.

At the store’s Broadway entrance, there was a 10-foot-high umbrella covered with white flowers and ivy. Called the “Shower of Flowers Garden,” glistening jewels streamed down from the umbrella looking very much like gentle spring rain showering another garden below.

The center aisle of the store was transformed into an avenue flanked on both sides by blossoming cherry trees.

Renowned floral designers were asked to create a “Bouquet of the Day”—a series of changing displays in the center of the main floor.

The designers included Jane Packer, Rebecca Cole, James François-Pijuan, David Beahm, Jorge Cazzorla, and Preston Bailey. Each designer brought a fresh approach to the store with towering works. Saundra Parks at the Daily Blossom created floral pieces window displays in the 34th Street beauty arcade.

For his bouquet, James François-Pijuan grouped three glass containers of different heights and lavished them with flowers in shades of yellow, red and orange. The interiors of the vases included coils of colored glass jewels.

Bouquet of the Day by James François-Pijuan

Honestly, it was breathtaking, and a scent-sational floral fragrance filled the air throughout the entire first floor.

Among handbags, cosmetics, and jewelry there were 16 specialty gardens plus thousands of cut flowers, potted plants, and trees—more than 30,000 varieties in all including cacti, tropical plants, tulips, rhododendrons, azaleas, peonies, and hydrangeas.

Macy's entire first floor was a virtual garden

(Photo: NYCfoto)

Featured were towering topiaries, including a tall giraffe made entirely of chicken-and-hen succulents . . . an all-white English garden . . . a desert garden . . . a Scottish highlands garden with heather and a fog machine . . . and a blue-ribbon orchid garden with 60 award-winning orchid varieties from six different continents especially chosen for the show by the American Orchid Society.

It was quite a stunning sight.

The show ran for two weeks, from Sunday, April 4 thru Sunday, April 18.

How did they keep all of the flowers fresh and blooming? Halfway through the show’s run, a small army of 60 workers replaced the entire exhibit overnight with fresh blooms.

It happens every year. The show is free. Don’t miss it!