The PHS 200th anniversary starts with a logo that has plants growing out of its own letters. On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society unveiled a redesigned wordmark and a new website, the first public pieces of a yearlong program that runs toward the anniversary itself next November.

You have probably met PHS without noticing. It is the street tree outside a rowhouse, the vacant lot that turned into a garden, the community plot growing food for the block. The Flower Show gets the attention every March, but the organization has been working on Philadelphia’s streets since it was founded in November 1827.

What the PHS 200th Anniversary Looks Like in the New Wordmark

The wordmark is the first thing you see. Three plants rise from the letters, which ties the name to gardening at a glance, and subtle nods to Philadelphia’s street grid root the design in the city where PHS began. I like that the grid is something you find on the second look and not a slogan.

Philadelphia studio Smith & Diction developed the identity with PHS staff, leadership, board members and stakeholders. Around the wordmark sits a wider palette of garden colors and hand-drawn botanical illustrations, a system built to give each PHS program room for its own character while still reading as one organization.

Those programs cover a lot of ground: Healthy Neighborhoods, its public gardens, gardening education and the Flower Show. One look has to work for a tree-planting crew and a Convention Center exhibition. Putting the plants inside the letters is a plain, sensible way to hold that range together.

A Redesigned Website for the PHS 200th Anniversary Year

The new site goes with the identity. It is meant to make PHS’s work easier to explore and to give people clear ways in, whether that means volunteering, joining as a member or donating. Rob Feinberg, the organization’s chief marketing, communications and sales officer, framed the idea as showing how “small acts of gardening can add up to meaningful change.”

Both pieces come out of the Third Century Plan, a new strategic roadmap built partly around raising awareness of PHS and winning more support for its mission. That is a candid goal at this age. The PHS 200th anniversary arrives with an organization that is woven into Philadelphia and still wants more people to know it.

Gardening Work Behind the PHS 200th Anniversary

The anniversary is easier to appreciate on a walk than on a screen. PHS’s reach includes trees lining neighborhood streets, vacant lots turned into green space, community gardens growing fresh food and horticultural training that leads to new careers. The pop-up gardens on South Street and in Manayunk follow the same idea in a smaller, quicker form.

The Flower Show stays the biggest stage. The 2027 show runs March 13 to 21 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which puts the first large public moment of the anniversary year already on the calendar.

Where the PHS 200th Anniversary Goes From Here

PHS has described the yearlong program as special events that look back at its history and bring the public into what comes next. Feinberg said the identity is meant to grow with the seasons, like a garden, and show up in new ways across PHS programs and the neighborhoods they serve.

That flexibility is the reason the PHS 200th anniversary needed a whole system, and a logo alone would not have done the job. A tree program, a pop-up garden and a Flower Show booth will each carry the same plants, and the same grid, into very different places.

The measure of a rebrand like this is the tree outside your own door, and whether by next November more of us know who put it there.

About Post Author

Allan Lane

Philadelphia born and bred, Allan Lane is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of digital magazines. He launched his first publication, SportBikes Inc Magazine in 2010, followed by dosage MAGAZINE in 2019. Recently, Allan launched his third online publication, Club For Man. As a journalist, Allan covers fashion, lifestyle, culture, art, and motorcycles.

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