The annual Fall Chrysanthemum Show features a display of blooms in a variety of shapes and colors in the Lyman Conservatory at the Botanic Garden of Smith College, 16 College Lane, Northampton, Massachusetts.

The Fall Mum Show has been a popular college and community tradition since the early 1900s. It begins the first Saturday in November, and runs for two weeks including the third weekend. This year’s edition runs November 3, 2018, through Sunday, November 18, 2018.

It showcases the hybridizing experiments of the horticulture class. Road Trips Gardeners have a chance to vote on their favorites.

Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, except open until 8 p.m. Fridays. The suggested donation is $5.

The evening before the show opens, Dr. Victoria Johnson will speak about “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic”. The lecture takes place at 7:30 p.m. November 2, 2018, in the Campus Center Carroll Room at Smith College. She is an associate professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College in New York City.

In this lecture featuring her book, American Eden, Dr. Johnson “rescues” Hosack, (family doctor and friend to both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and attending doctor at the famous duel) from obscurity, and highlights his significant contributions to botany and medicine.

In 1801, on twenty acres of Manhattan farmland, Hosack founded the first public botanical garden in the new nation, amassing a collection of medicinal, agricultural, and ornamental plants that brought him worldwide praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Sir Joseph Banks, and Alexander von Humboldt. Hosack used his pioneering institution to train the next generation of American doctors and naturalists, and to conduct some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States. Today, his former garden is the site of Rockefeller Center.

The presentation is free and open to the public. It is followed by a reception, book signing, and preview of the Chrysanthemum Show at the Lyman Plant House.

There’s a slide show of past chrysanthemum displays online.

(Photo courtesy of Lyman Conservatory)