PHS Garden Trips

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) offers an exciting array of extended tours in the United States and abroad. These tours visit beautiful private and public gardens, flower shows, arboretums, specialty nurseries, and more! PHS trips provide access to private gardens, and introduce you to extraordinary gardeners and garden owners.

In Search of Orchids: PHS Goes to the Amazon!
April 9 - 18, 2012

PHS invites you on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Peru in search of orchids, history, and the breathtaking natural scenery of the Amazon Basin. Co-sponsored by the ACEER Foundation and West Chester University, this trip will bring you to the sophisticated city of Lima, the remote research station of Wayqecha, and the only canopy walkway system in the cloud forests of the Andes.

You will also explore the sacred city of Machu Picchu and Cusco, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the western hemisphere. The group will stay at a hotel that houses the world’s largest native species orchid garden, and is alive with the color and motion of 15 species of hummingbirds and 108 species of butterflies. Local guides and orchid experts, as well as John Salventi of Parkside Orchids and Chela Kleiber of PHS will accompany the group.

Peru is home to over 2,000 species of orchids, with many more likely to be discovered. This trip will raise your awareness of the wild sources of this captivating plant, and change the way you look at orchids forever. Please join us on this wonderful adventure together! Click here for the complete itinerary and event details.

Visit the Gardens of Bath & Wiltshire, England
June 3 - 12, 2012
Trip Filled. If you would like to be added to the waitlist, please contact Betsie Blodgett at gardentrips@pennhort.org or call 215-988-8818.

In June 2012, PHS will return to England to see wonderful  gardens in and around Bath and in the county of Wiltshire.

For the first phase of the tour, we will be based in the Georgian elegance of Bath, with its restored Roman baths and fine medieval abbey.  From Bath it’s a short distance to the limestone gardens of the south Cotswolds, including the Duke of Beaufort’s Badminton Park, as well as to those to the south-west in Somerset.  Close at hand, we will visit the exuberant planting at Hanham Court, home to Isabel and Julian Bannerman (reputedly Prince Charles’s favourite garden designers), as well as the superb Italianate garden created by Harold Peto at Iford Manor. We will include a visit to Wells Cathedral, perhaps the most beautiful of the great English cathedrals.  Tour members will have the option to enjoy lively cultural activities (musical and theatrical) in Bath and neighbouring Bristol.

For the second part of the tour, we will move to Wiltshire, with chalk downlands and gentle vales. After attending Choral Evensong at Salisbury’s magnificent Cathedral on Sunday, we will visit nearby Wilton House (built by Inigo Jones in 1647) where, over the past 40 years, the Earl of Pembroke has transformed the gardens. The Wiltshire landscape includes many distinguished smaller private gardens as well as excellent pubs for lunches.

The tour will be led by Jane Pepper and we will fly from Philadelphia on Sunday, June 3, returning to Philadelphia on Wednesday, June 13.  Our tour organizers will once again be Ann and Colin Senior. The trip is now full, to be added to the waiting list, please contact Betsie Blodgett at 215-988-8818 or email gardentrips@pennhort.org.