Tags: 2014, Birute Anne Vileisis, Chelsea Flower Show, Meeting, Season 2013-2014

For our May event, Birute Anne Vileisis, Ph.D. presented on the Chelsea Flower Show. The flower show is the most famous flower show in the U.K. and perhaps in the world attracting a worldwide audience of 157,000 visitors each year.

The Chelsea Flower Show is held for five days in the third week in May on the eleven-acre grounds of the Royal Hospital for military Pensioners in Chelsea, London.

A staggering number of 800 people spend just over three weeks building this premiere horticultural event putting together show gardens, nursery exhibits, floral displays, garden product stands, and educational exhibits.

Trained as an art historian, Birute Anne Vileisis earned her Ph.D. at Princeton University in early medieval art. She taught art history at the University of Virginia. Later, as a researcher at Dumbarton Oaks in D.C., she there became immersed in Beatrix Farrand’s garden. Dr. Vileisis was also an assistant to the Director at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American Art. In the mid 1980’s she moved to California and obtained a Certificate in Horticulture from UCLA. Serving 20 years as a university administrator, Birute has retired is now an avid gardener and plant collector. Currently she is President of the Malibu Orchid Society and 1st VP and Program Chair of the Malibu Garden Club. In her free time she visits and photographs gardens in Southern California and throughout the world.