THE NEWPORT FLOWER SHOW

The Newport Flower Show is three days in June at Rosecliff, on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island: floral design and botanical arts judged in the rooms of the house, cut flowers and planted containers on the terrace, a garden built on the lawn that runs down to the sea, and a marketplace of tents around it. It is given by the Preservation Society of Newport County, and what it raises keeps the Society’s gardens.

Rosecliff was built for parties. It gave its first before it was finished, with ferns and flowers hiding the parts that were not done.

The House

The land had belonged to George Bancroft, the historian, who summered there in a house he called Rose Cliff and grew roses. The American Beauty is credited to him and his gardener.

In 1891 Theresa Fair Oelrichs, whose father had made a fortune in the silver of the Comstock Lode, bought the land with her husband and her sister, and in 1898 she commissioned a house from McKim, Mead & White. Stanford White modelled it on the Grand Trianon at Versailles, in white terracotta, with a ballroom taking up the whole of the central block, the largest in Newport, and a staircase that comes down through a heart-shaped opening in the floor above.

Work began in 1899. The house was wanted for the next season, so in July 1900 Mrs Oelrichs moved in, sent the workmen away, and in August gave a dinner for a hundred and twelve, to outdo a rival’s harvest ball. The house was finished in 1902.

The party remembered is the Bal Blanc of 19 August 1904, at which everything was white and silver.

In 1947 J. Edgar Monroe, a shipbuilder from New Orleans, bought the house with his wife, and in 1971 they gave it to the Preservation Society with two million dollars to keep it. The ballroom was used for the film of The Great Gatsby in 1974, and its ceiling opens The Gilded Age on television.

The Show

Newport had a flower show before this one. In 1914 Edith Wetmore, of Chateau-sur-Mer, held one there as a competition for the gardeners of the great houses.

The present show was begun in 1996 by the Society, with Mrs Samuel Hamilton, a gardener who summered in Newport, and it has been at Rosecliff from the first. A storm came through the grounds on the Saturday of that first show, and it reopened on time on the Sunday. It has missed one year since, 2020, and in 2023 it moved to Marble House while Rosecliff was under repair.

The entries are judged in four divisions: floral design, horticulture, botanical arts and photography. The designers are in the house from five on the morning of the opening, and the judges from eight. In a good year more than three hundred and fifty cut specimens stand on the terrace off the ballroom. The blue ribbon goes one year to the owner of an estate and the next to a woman who gardens out of her garage.

In 2026, the thirtieth show, the theme was Pearls of Newport, for the anniversary’s stone, and it ran from 19 to 21 June.

What to Know

It runs from Friday to Sunday on a weekend in June, open from nine until five. Tickets are sold in advance for a morning or an afternoon, and it is held whatever the weather. The opening party is on the Friday evening, with cocktails and music.

A lounge suit, light in cloth. Hats are worn to the opening party, and worn with intent.

Tickets and places at the party are sold by the Society, to its members first.

Newport is three hours from New York by road and ninety minutes from Boston. The train from New York reaches Kingston, in Rhode Island, with a car for the last stretch. Stay in Newport, near Bellevue Avenue.

The mistake is to think the arrangements were made the day before. They are made in the house from five that morning, so the Friday visitor sees them at their freshest.

The Court

The Newport Flower Show is not the Court’s own. Places at the opening party and tickets for the show are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Newport, and the table afterward. The Chelsea Flower Show is a month earlier.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.