Inaugural L.E.A.F Festival of Flowers
New York’s first contemporary flower show: L.E.A.F Festival of Flowers opens this weekend, free of charge. A celebration throughout Manhattan, but centred in the Meatpacking District, for all New Yorkers to come together and enjoy the beauty of nature.
A floral festival for today’s aesthetes and epicureans, celebrating all that is great and good about flowers, and a platform for conversations around nature and the environment. L.E.A.F will feature a series of creative and curated programs – to include city wide installations, floral classes, brand activations, retail and epicurean experiences.
The weekend will go like this: On Friday, June 11, in the middle of the night, over 100 florists, mostly from the metropolitan area, will blanket the Meatpacking District with more than a million flowers. Gansevoort Plaza, a new public square, will morph into a European-style flower market, with 25 floral pillars, or plinths, each over six feet high. About 20 stores and restaurants in the district will have blooming installations on the premises.
In the future L.E.A.F will be for-profit, with ticketed lectures, master classes and parties. This year, however, it will be free to the public. Florists will not be charged to sell from the market, and there will also be a program connecting florists to retailers seeking in-house displays.
“These florists have been decimated by Covid, so this year, we wanted to remove all barriers to entry,” said the show’s founder, Moira Breslin, who runs a strategic communications agency. During early planning, one of the biggest hurdles was finding the right location. A willing partner in the Meatpacking Business Improvement District fit the bill. A 30,000-square-foot area with a pedestrian zone, L.E.A.F will be the first major event the district has held there. “We were gearing up for a big 2020, and then we all know what happened,” said Jeffrey LeFrancois, the district’s executive director. “L.E.A.F will literally dress up the neighborhood; it’s going to look so good.”
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