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The Last Show

Before heading for mulch piles,
these plants take one final star turn. 

At the 91短视频, even in death, plants have one final performance.

As the days shorten, leaves fall, and the season itself feels like a long exhale, the Krehbiel Gallery will host The Last Show, a striking new installation that honors the Garden鈥檚 dearly departed plant material. Imagine root flares, weathered stumps, and twisted branches taking center stage. Once bound for the mulch pile, these remnants now take a last autumnal bow as art before they return to nourish the living collection.

 

Deaccessioned: Unknown root flare, Chestnut mushrooms, Mums 鈥 fresh cuts

Deaccessioned: Uknown root flare, chestnut mushrooms, mums 鈥 fresh cuts

 

From spooky to soulful

The display began with a simple seasonal idea: mushrooms. Exhibit horticulturist Jason Toth originally planned a moody mushroom feature to align with fall traditions. But as he gathered materials from the Garden鈥檚 landscape waste yard, something else caught his eye: the raw, sculptural beauty of discarded plant parts.

鈥淒ramatic root flares, stumps pruned down to oblivion, horrible-looking branches鈥攅ach told a story,鈥 he said. 鈥淭hey carried the mark of human intervention and care used to cultivate our gardens, and then their ultimate removal. It felt like they deserved a proper sendoff.鈥

That shift in perspective transformed the project. Instead of a display about mushrooms, it has become an inspiring and poetic plant memorial.

Outer Layers: Conifer bark, Lion鈥檚 mane mushrooms, King trumpet mushrooms, Carnations 鈥 fresh cuts

Outer Layers: Conifer bark, lion鈥檚 mane mushrooms, king trumpet mushrooms, carnations 鈥 fresh cuts

 

Sustainability, reimagined

The Last Show is a thoughtful reminder of the Garden鈥檚 commitment to sustainability, celebrating renewal through recycling, reuse, and return to the soil. It reflects the Garden鈥檚 belief that nothing in nature truly ends, it only transforms.

鈥淭hrough this lens, visitors can see how our practices鈥攃omposting, mulching, recycling鈥攁re part of an interconnected cycle of life, growth, and death,鈥 Toth said. 鈥淲hat sounds like a scholastic idea becomes tangible, visual, and thought-provoking.鈥

 

 

 Crossing (hanging), Hawthorne branches, Lilies 鈥 fresh cuts

Crossing: Hawthorne branches, lilies 鈥 fresh cuts

 

What you鈥檒l see

The installation includes five works, each pairing dramatic plant debris with fresh flowers and, in some cases, mushrooms. The juxtapositions are designed to be unexpected鈥攎oody, solemn, and beautiful all at once.

One piece elevates a massive, unearthed root flare, its spread of woody arms propped wide. Cut flowers and mushrooms tuck into cavities between roots, like small bursts of life clinging to an ancient skeleton.

Another work, titled The Final Cut, features a coppiced willow stool鈥攑runed year after year until its surface is covered in scars. Removed at last, the stump hovers above a bed of disbud spider mums grown by the Garden鈥檚 production greenhouse team.

Each work carries a label listing the 鈥渕aterials鈥 that went into it鈥攋ust as you鈥檇 see elsewhere in the Garden. Visitors may smile at the novelty, but they may also feel something deeper: gratitude for years of service, or even a quiet recognition of shared mortality.

The Final Cut Coppiced willow stool Disbud spider mums

The Final Cut: Coppiced willow stool, disbud spider mums

 

Playing with dead things

For Toth, the project is as personal as professional.

鈥淚 feel like a kid in our Nature Play Garden where I sometimes forage for debris,鈥 he said. 鈥淧laying with dead things鈥攁nd learning from them鈥攕pans the age spectrum.鈥

He also admits to a fondness for the landscape waste yard itself.

 鈥淚t鈥檚 like reading a book. You can tell what was removed, and often why. There鈥檚 a story and a legacy in every stump and branch.鈥

That sense of story drives The Last Show. By pairing discarded material with cut flowers and mushrooms, Toth bends the familiar into a powerful narrative that is both strange and inspiring. Dead things become art. Waste becomes wonder.
 

 

 

Injury: Unknown soft snag, blue oyster mushrooms, roses 鈥 fresh cuts

Injury: Unknown soft snag, blue oyster mushrooms, roses 鈥 fresh cuts

 

A final bow

After the exhibition ends, the displays will be dismantled, composted, and returned to the soil, nourishing the next generation of the Garden鈥檚 living collection. As autumn gives way to winter, The Last Show is a moving reminder that every end feeds a beginning, that decay is its own quiet form of renewal. A true encore.