Longtime Chrysanthemum show returns this fall

Date: 10/30/2023

NORTHAMPTON — The legendary Fall Chrysanthemum Show is returning to Smith College’s Lyman Plant House and Conservatory for two weeks in November.

The show, which will run from Nov. 4 to 19, is a floral showcase featuring chrysanthemums in a variety of shapes and hues, according to Julie Thomson, the communications coordinator for The Botanic Garden of Smith College.

“This floral showcase is unlike any garden mums you have ever seen,” Thomson said. “Every autumn as the fall color fades outdoors, almost every shade of the rainbow can be seen inside Lyman Conservatory at the Botanic Garden of Smith College.”

The day-to-day details

Thomson said visitors can expect a “visual symphony of color and shapes of a variety of mums grown out in a multitude of ways” at the Conservatory’s Physiology House and Cold Storage House.

This year’s show in particular will showcase 58 named varieties grown out over the course of months by botanic garden staff and Smith horticulture students. According to Thomson, there will be over 100 “new varieties” at this year’s show.

Among the mum forms and techniques featured at the 2023 show are standards, cascades and hybrid propagation.

According to Thomson, the mum varieties grown as standards are chosen for their unexpected and dramatic shapes and colors while cascade method generates varieties of mums that are trained up walls or into downward-flowing displays.

Hybrid propagation, meanwhile, has been a student tradition at Smith since the early 1900s. During the fall semester, horticulture class students learn the techniques of hybridization and then produce new crosses that are grown out and exhibited at the following year’s show.

“An incredible amount of planning and work goes into growing the mums to produce the show,” Thomson said. “The horticultural team, with the help of greenhouse student workers, begin planning and working on the show in December/January.”

The show will also feature an opening lecture called “What Ties, What Roots? Chrysanthemum Kinship at the Ends of the World” on Nov. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Smith College’s Weinstein Auditorium. According to Thomson, this year’s lecture touches on the themes of Smith’s year-long exhibit titled “The Bell Jars: Lyman Conservatory and Sylvia Plath’s Botanical Imagination.”

“[The lecture] traces Plath’s development of the bell jar metaphor used in her famous novel, “The Bell Jar,” and explores what it might say about our relationship to Chrysanthemums, family and place,” Thomson said.

The lecture will also be live streamed on the Botanic Garden of Smith College Facebook and YouTube pages. Attendees that night are invited to preview the fall show immediately following the lecture.

The show’s history and legacy

According to Thomson, the show has been a popular college and community tradition since the early 1900s, drawing over 10,000 visitors across the two weeks each year.

“Breeding mums has been a horticultural activity at Smith for over 100 years, an educational experience that students have engaged in during the botany courses that have been taught at Lyman,” Thomson said. “The mum show started as a way to showcase this work.”

When the show first began, it was on display in Lyman Conservatory’s Show House. In the 1970s, the show moved to the Conservatory’s Physiology House and Cold House to accommodate for the growing size and interest from the community.

According to Thomson, the Fall Mum Show began as a way to showcase the hybridizing experiments of Smith College’s students. The show has evolved to now also include mums that are grown out in a variety of methods.

Thomson said a major reason why the show has been so popular for many years is because it offers a welcome “pop of color” during a time when the natural world is about to lay dormant.

But another reason for the show’s popularity is the student mum hybrids.

These mum hybrids are appreciated by visitors for a variety of reasons,” Thomson said. “One, they showcase the educational work of Smithies; two, they invite visitors to vote for their favorite, leading to another induction into the Mum Hall of Fame.”

This year’s show hours run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Saturday through Thursday during the two weeks and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Fridays. Members of the Friends of the Botanic Garden will have members-only hours from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. during the two weeks.

More information on the show can be found on the website: https://garden.smith.edu/news-events/events/2023-fall-chrysanthemum-show.