Our Annual Autumn Flower and Produce Show 2015 - A Report

The 2015 Show before opening- well filled with a good number of
entries both in the horticultural and the domestic classes.

We are pleased to report that the annual show was a resounding success!  It will not be news to most of the membership that the Committee was rather worried about the show this year, as a combination of the weather and the absence / illness of a number of the more prolific exhibitors meant that the numbers of entries might have been somewhat low. However, an appeal went out to everyone a few days in advance asking for entries (begging, pleading, imploring, even threatening, more like - Ed), and you all responded magnificently!  It would be invidious to name anyone, but we even had some members who were going on holiday raiding their gardens the day before traveling (as if they didn't have enough to do), and leaving entries for the Show Secretary to put in on their behalf.  On the subject of the Show Secretary, please extend a round of virtual applause to Jilly for her organisation of the show, and to her team of little elves (you know who you are) for cheerfully undertaking the work that is needed to put it on and run it on the day.

Our silverware for the occasion, all
beautifully polished and presented.

The show had not been held in Hurst Green for four years, partly because we have held joint shows in Oxted on the last few occasions, but we took the decision to return to Hurst Green this year, and we were ultimately able to put on a good show for the village, and to do ourselves proud.  It is down to the membership as a whole and your willingness to put in entries that the show was a success.  Even if you were unable to put in an entry or two, we had a good turnout for tea and cakes and had a number of visitors who were not members, but were interested and impressed by what they saw - so a good result all round!  Putting on a show such as this is hard work for the Committee, and it is very pleasing when everyone responds so positively and appears to be so interested - so a big "thank you" again to everybody.  We do hope you enjoyed yourself on the day - the photos certainly suggest that you did, and we feel that it vindicated our decision to hold the Show again in St Agatha's Hall

Some of the show winners with Chairman Jane (in the centre) and
Malcolm Young from LODHS (far right) who kindly
agreed to present the prizes.
Alan Essex (far left) won the Fruit classes, Margaret Edwards (next to Alan)
took the Domestic section cup, and Jeremy Ball (between Jane and Malcolm)
won the Vegetable section.  Congratulations to the other cup winners
who unfortunately could not attend the prize giving.

We would also like to thank those non-members who came along to visit the show, and who also made entries; we had a number of members of "The Grow With Us Club" (LODHS) from Oxted, both for tea and for competition.  We extended an invitation to them to enter the show, and it was very good to see a number of them responding.  We do hope that they enjoyed themselves and will continue to enter in the future; we already have close links to Godstone for our Spring Challenge show, and it is good to be on such friendly terms with Oxted as well for the Summer and the Autumn shows.

Teatime!  Very popular, with good cakes!
Many thanks to Lesley and Joan for
holding the fort in the kitchen, and
to everyone who donated a cake.

We also had some independent entries from local growers (including a past member who came out of retirement especially for the occasion.)  In fact, we had nearly 40 individual entrants, and this meant that all of the prizes were hotly contested, with much of the scoring being very close indeed.  I hope that many of the new exhibitors will take heart that their scores (if they are counting) matched or exceeded those of the "usual suspects", and that the distribution of awards was varied across the whole of the entrant base with cups going to people who have never won before.  It is also a good point to mention that, in a change to previous years, we decided to ask visitors to vote for the "audience participation" classes using a coin.  The money raised from this will be donated to Multiple Sclerosis, and we think that we will continue this system in future shows.

Our final results were as follows, but please remember that many of the awards were won by a whisker! We do look forward to welcoming you again next year, and now that so many of you have shown a willingness to exhibit, we hope that the 2016 show will be even bigger and better.  You have all responded well and shown that you can do it, and now the Committee is going to expect you all to keep going!

However, the real aim is to look at lovely flowers and produce, and so, on with the pictures...

Award	Description	Winner
Crewdson Cup	Best horticultural exhibit in show	Richard Dove
RHS Banksian Medal	Overall winner of the horticultural classes	Jeremy Ball
Leonard May Cup	Most points in the flower classes	Ted Riches
Crewdson Challenge Cup	Most points in the vegetable classes	Jeremy Ball
Brenda Cup	Most points in the fruit classes	Alan Essex
MacEwan Cup	Most points in the domestic classes	Margaret Edwards
Mrs L Wettern Cup	Most points in the Dahlia classes	Ted Riches
Sykes Coaster	Most points in the floral art classes	Sue Kempton

A very well deserved "Best In Show" for Richard Dove,
with his collection of 4 or more vegetables. 
The photo (as usual) does not do this trug sufficient justice.
This award is restricted to the Horticultural classes, by the way.

Dahlias - glorious at this time of year.  There were a number of entries
in hot contention for "Best in Show", and the entries
compared very favourably to the Edenbridge and Oxted show
held a few weeks before, which is a large regional show with
a number of national-standard exhibitors.

Arrangements of flowers and shrubs from an exhibitor's own
garden are always popular.

The Foliage and Cacti classes.  Note to self - succulents are meant
to be in the foliage class and not in the cacti!  A rather
embarrassing reminder to check the schedule, especially when you are
supposed to be stewarding the show to get the entries correct ...

Fuchsia heads (single) make a lovely display, and the
class for doubles is also glorious.  We must do something
about the water trays though - there was a lot of water spilt!

We even managed to get a few entries for the roses classes - although many
members mentioned that there would have been more if only
the show had been held a week later!

An overview of many of the vegetable and fruit classes.

As you can see, runner bean is a popular - and well populated - class! 

Tomatoes and "any other vegetables".  Although there were red entries
for the cherry tomato class, the weather meant that many exhibitors' larger
tomatoes had split (apparently due to the fluctuations of hot and cold).
Purple tomatoes were therefore an exhibit of choice as these are
apparently more resistant to splitting. 
And yes, they are purple all the way through!

Floral exhibits are always a delight and allow creativity to shine out.
This year's theme was "Afternoon Tea".

Miniature floral art - always an eye catching class!

This year we re-introduced "flowers in a tankard".  Originally
meant only for men, our well-known feminist principles
opened the class to women as well this year.

The Domestic section.  There was a very good turnout in this; jams, jellies
and preserves in the foreground, then cakes (ginger cake), handicrafts,
and photos at the far end.

One of the handicraft sections.  Despite splitting a single "general handicraft"
class  into a number of specific smaller classes such as "soft toy" or "knitted",
we still had many entries across the handicrafts making decisions difficult.
The winner of "any other handicraft"is the glass terrarium in the middle,
hotly contested by many others including the wooden walking stick.