Wicked Plant Fest draws crowds to SteelStacks for sixth year in Bethlehem

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Plant collectors, casual hobbyists and curious passersby packed the SteelStacks campus on Sunday for the sixth annual Lehigh Valley Wicked Plant Fest, a showcase of houseplants, succulents, orchids and handmade goods from regional artisans.

The free festival ran from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with vendor tents spread across the outdoor grounds at the base of the former Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces and into the adjacent parking areas off Founders Way.

Dozens of plant sellers set up alongside vendors offering pottery, paintings, 3D-printed art, clothing and other handcrafted items. Food trucks and live music rounded out the programming.

The event is organized by Dawn Ash, owner of The Wicked Botanist, a plant shop at 267 E. Broad St. in Bethlehem. Ash said she pitched the idea shortly after opening her store, inspired by Bethlehem’s broader festival culture.

“I was like, we should have a plant fest,” Ash said. The first edition was held in Allentown before moving to SteelStacks, where it has stayed.

Ash said roughly 13,000 people typically attend the spring festival, with the fall edition drawing closer to 10,000, according to ArtsQuest figures.

According to Ash, the festival curates its plant lineup so that each booth offers something different from the next. She said many sellers return year after year, and several have told her the spring fest serves as their largest opening event of the season.

The next edition is scheduled for Sept. 20 at the SteelStacks.

Vendors range from hobbyists to artists

Among the plant sellers was Cody Hall, who runs a small operation with his partner, Jiaxing Chen. Hall, who studied botany, said the two propagate most of their succulents at home and source orchids from suppliers, since orchids generally require lab conditions to grow from seed.

“We have about a thousand succulents at the house, about 100 orchids,” Hall said. “It’s sort of a hobby that got out of control.”

Hall said the decision to formalize the hobby into a business came when the couple looked at the heating bill for their greenhouse.

Orchids in particular need to stay above 60 degrees, he said, which can push winter heating costs into the hundreds of dollars per month. As a result, the pair scales down their orchid stock heading into winter and restocks in the spring.

Hall said the cost pressure has thinned the ranks of local orchid growers over the years, who he said struggle to compete on price with growers in Hawaii and Florida.

Elsewhere at the festival, artist Devin Browne, 39, was selling work from her business, Moss and Moon. Browne, who traveled from Pittsburgh for the event, said she builds sculptures and decorative pieces from thrifted, repurposed and foraged materials, including broken statues and discarded ornaments.

One piece on display, she said, started as a broken dragon statue she rebuilt with a body made of leaves.

Browne said many of her pieces are what she calls “channeled” — built around a specific intention or vision that she said comes to her before she finds the materials.

“I see pieces in nature, and I’ll just get a vision of like, it needs to be this,” Browne said. “And then I wait till I find the pieces to put together and create that.”

She described one earlier work, called the Golden Grove, that she said she made from a burnt Christmas ornament someone had been throwing out. According to Browne, the woman who eventually bought the piece had grown up on a road called Golden Grove and lost her childhood home to a fire.

“She came in, she was looking, and then I just see this woman crying,” Browne said. “She was like, this is meant to be mine.”

Browne said each piece is tagged with the story behind it so a buyer can decide whether it resonates. She said she also tries to keep her practice as eco-friendly as possible by handcrafting nearly every component herself.

It was Browne’s first year at the Lehigh Valley festival, she said, after attendees at a Pittsburgh event told her her work would be a good fit. She said she plans to return for the September edition.

“It’s going so good,” she said.

A community fixture

The Wicked Plant Fest has become a recurring fixture on the SteelStacks calendar, and Ash has continued to organize it twice a year. The Wicked Botanist itself has shifted its focus in recent months: the business closed its Whitehall Township location earlier this year to concentrate on the Bethlehem store.

Asked what she wanted attendees to take away from the day, Ash described the event as “a plant people unite type community event.”

Admission and parking are free.