By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
HERALD SQUARE – The weather may still be cold, but spring is in the air this weekend at the annual Macy’s Flower Show.
The store looked more like a greenhouse Friday afternoon as flowers flourished along the main floor in preparation for the show that opens Sunday. It will feature ten different-themed gardens, as well as family activities and a giant bouquet centerpiece to be displayed in the aisle.
Starting Sunday, seven new gardens will display at this year's Herald Square showcase, including the courtyard-like Urban Oasis garden, a miniature garden featuring mini roses and the Orchid Garden.
Also new to the show this year is the Antebellum Garden, a five-flower collection from the deep south’s sultry cities of Savannah, Charleston and Atlanta. Rich-smelling gardenias will display in full bloom alongside palmetto palms, dogwoods, gardenias and camellias.
Other gardens to return this year are the tropical garden, hydrangea garden and the desert garden. The tropical garden presents a visual feast of cacao, coffee, kumquats and mangos.
The hydrangea garden shows an extensive variety of the plant, and the desert garden hosts heat-loving barrel cactus, euphorbia, kalanchoe, air plants, saguaro cactus and more.
The Japanese Garden is also being presented alongside Carnegie Hall’s first annual Japan NYC Festival, with bamboo, heavenly palms, azaleas, pines, cypress and mums.
The show has been a New York tradition since 1953, but it will have an extra flourish of spring fever this year since its opening will be commemorated by a Macy's-hosted wedding. New York police officer Moise Naolo and his fiance Santina Bowers will tie the knot in the same place they met two years before.
Spectators lounging in the store's Starbucks Friday afternoon said they enjoyed soaking up the romance of it all.
"It's beautiful," Brooklyn resident Crista Smithen, 26, said. "There's a lot of flowers I've never even heard of. And it smells wonderful."
Others weren't so blown away.
"It's nice and all, but it's not what made me want to come here, to be honest," London visitor Chris Mouskoundi, 27, said. "It's not the drawing factor."
