By Anna Guido
Enquirer contributor

Flower show judges Ruth Rogers Clausen, horticulture editor of Country Living Gardener magazine, and John Elsley, director of horticulture at Klehm Companies, look at a display called "The Fairy Garden," by Gnomenculture Inc., during the judging of the Cincinnati Flower Show at Coney Island on Tuesday. Photos by STEVEN M. HERPPICH/The Cincinnati Enquirer

A 30-foot ivy dragon display by Paul Busse's Applied Imagination breathes red impatiens flames as it protects "A Wizard's Garden." The flower show runs today through Sunday.

CALIFORNIA - Flowers and business are booming at the Cincinnati Flower Show.

Vendors, exhibitors and event organizers say the nationally recognized show - which opens today for the second year at Coney Island - is expected to generate more business and more attention than last year's event.

More than 55,000 people attended the 14th annual flower show last year, a record. Moving the event from Ault Park to the larger Coney Island, just off Interstate 275, was a key factor.

"It's more accessible to more people, parking is easier and for a vendor, it's better," said Barbara "Sam" Browne, owner of Lane's End Farm in Loveland, which makes dried, paper and silk floral arrangements.

"I've doubled my sales from Ault Park to here and I did well at Ault Park," Browne said.

The new location is attracting more people from Clermont and Warren counties and from Kentucky,said Bob Maddux, chairman of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society, which organizes the event. "They know where Coney is."

Maddux, who owns Delhi Flower & Garden Centers, said the show has always been a boost to the area's horticulture industry. But continued recognition and its new location are spreading the wealth into other local industries.

The Clermont County Convention & Visitors Bureau sees the show's new location as an opportunity to drum up business in its hotel industry. With its new "Blooms & Rooms in Clermont County, Ohio!" promotion this year, the bureau is offering discounted tickets and hotel packages for the flower show.

"Our goal is to book rooms to bring people into Clermont County and let them know what we have to offer," said Dana Clark, the bureau's leisure marketing specialist.

"We may not see the product of our spending on the flower show until later, but we're really in a building year," Clark said.

Easier to carry

Parking was limited at Ault Park and many visitors to the show had to be shuttled from off-site lots.

"It's easier here for people to pick up and carry things back to their cars," Browne said.

Attendance at the final Ault Park show was about 40,000. This year, organizers predict as many as 65,000 could attend.

AT A GLANCE

• Attendance at the first flower show: 10,000 to 15,000. • Predicted attendance for this year's show: 65,000. • Cost to produce: About $1 million, including in-kind services worth about $450,000. • Gifts: Nearly $300,000 from flower show proceeds has been given back to the community.

FLOWER SHOW GUIDE

Today's coverage: • Flower show's new roots • Nature gives an encore • Flower Show schedule Previous stories: • Flower Show: 15th year Gala From CiN Weekly: • Flower Show preview

The number of exhibitors and vendors also increased by about 20 percent after the show moved to Coney.

Over the years, flower shows - which date back to Victorian times - have come to serve as a one-stop marketplace for garden needs and a major business platform for people in the industry.

"It's not only an enormous source of pleasure, but a big source of business," said Ruth Rogers Clausen, horticulture editor for Country Living Gardener magazine in New York.

Clausen has been coming to the Cincinnati Flower Show for several years.

"It's not inexpensive to mount an exhibit at a flower show," she said. "But I would expect that it's one of the major parts of a vendor's advertising budget for the year - all sorts of contracts come out of it."

Delhi Flower & Garden's two stores in Delhi Township and Springdale secured at least 35 percent of its landscape division business last year from the Coney Island show, up 10 percentage points from past years, Maddux said.

Next year, a study

Mary Margaret Rochford, a founding member of the flower show and president of the horticultural society, said Clermont County is taking advantage of a good business opportunity.

"There's a lot of opportunity that the event brings to the area from a business standpoint," Rochford said. "People who come into the flower show really want to do other things."

A study of the economic impact of the flower show has never been done. Rochford said the results would be useful in recruiting more sponsors and exhibitors, and would also be an important tool in the city's promotion of Cincinnati for tourism.

"Next year, I am definitely going to pay for an economic impact study," Rochford said. "Up until now, we've focused entirely on working really hard to make the product fabulous, but we just haven't done enough on economic impact."

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