A swinging Flower Show

Floral designers Bob and Karen Lamsback do just about every color scheme and theme for their customers' swanky weddings and galas, birthdays and bar mitzvahs.

But not at the Philadelphia Flower Show. There, their signature traditionally is elegant, European-style bloom displays.

Except this year.

The 2008 show's theme is "Jazz It Up," a celebration of the music and gardens - the "aura and flora" - of New Orleans. Not exactly holly and harpsichords.

So the Lamsbacks are adopting a super-modern style for the central feature, the first thing visitors see at the show. That means geometric shapes, sharp color combos like blue and purple and pink and brown, and flamboyant features like pendulous crystals, floral chandeliers and feathers.

"This year will be more theatrical," says Bob Lamsback, "like something you'd see in the Museum of Modern Art."

The show - which last year drew 259,000 - opens to the public Sunday and runs through next Sunday, March 9, at the Convention Center, 12th and Arch Streets. Members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society get a preview Saturday.

The Lamsbacks, married for 30 years and in business for 25, live in Langhorne and do their designing out of a four-story, Old City rowhouse notable for its narrow staircase and "Quaker kitchen" in the cellar.

They commute together and sit mere feet from each other in a small, second-floor office. You'd think, especially at Flower Show time, they'd be at each other's throats.

"We're together 24/7 and we love it. Right, dear?" Bob asks Karen. "We don't know any other way," she replies sweetly.

They also know their way around the show. This is their 18th time participating and their second central feature. In 2000, they illustrated the theme "Gardens for the New Millennium" with vignettes from three memorable New Year's Eve celebrations around the world.

Their 2008 design, approved early last summer, will have a grand archway for visitors to walk through. It'll mix music - a playful saxophone, hyper-bass and moss-covered piano with two loops of floating, lighted piano keys and musical notes - with tropical flowers and a waterfall on the side.

The effect, Bob says, "will be like when you go to a Broadway musical and the curtain goes up and you hear the first big song. Wow!"