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

Deaccessioned: Uknown root flare, chestnut mushrooms, mums – 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 late-October traditions. But as he gathered materials from the Garden’s landscape waste yard, something else caught his eye: the raw, sculptural beauty of discarded plant parts.

“Dramatic root flares, stumps pruned down to oblivion, horrible-looking branches—each told a story,” he said. “They 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.”

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’s mane mushrooms, king trumpet mushrooms, carnations – fresh cuts

Sustainability, reimagined

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

“Through this lens, visitors can see how our practices—composting, mulching, recycling—are part of an interconnected cycle of life, growth, and death,” Toth said. “What sounds like a scholastic idea becomes tangible, visual, and thought-provoking.”

Crossing: Hawthorne branches, lilies – fresh cuts

What you’ll 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—moody, 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—pruned 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’s production greenhouse team.

Each work carries a label listing the “materials” that went into it—just as you’d 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

Playing with dead things

For Toth, the project is as personal as professional.

“I feel like a kid in our Nature Play Garden where I sometimes forage for debris,” he said. “Playing with dead things—and learning from them—spans the age spectrum.”

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

 “It’s like reading a book. You can tell what was removed, and often why. There’s a story and a legacy in every stump and branch.”

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 – 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’s 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.