Hurst Green Gardening Club: June 2020

Summer Show 2020 - Online

Finally, the Summer Show (online version) has been collated and judged, and is presented below for you. We would like to send a heartfelt "thank you" to all of our entrants who have supported the move to an online show as we could not hold it "in person" owing to the Covid-19 lockdown. As organisers, it is always gratifying when support is given, as it makes all the effort behind the scenes worthwhile.

As we had to cancel the Spring Challenge against Godstone, the Committee decided to invite Godstone Gardeners to enter the show. We would like to thank all of the Godstone members who entered and helped us put on this show. Godstone Gardeners are particularly adept at floral art, as the results show!

We are also very grateful to Sylvia Pocock, who agreed to judge the show in this rather unique medium. Judging from photographs is not without difficulties, and was an experience on its own, and we cannot put our thanks better than her response:

"Very well done to everyone who entered in this very odd year. It is good to see people determined to get going and make the effort. The quality of the entries was excellent, and I am so pleased that you took up the challenge to hold this show".

We have learned a great deal by staging this version, and we would love to hear your responses to it - whether this is thoughts as an entrant or a viewer, or both. We may have to hold our main September show this way, and any feedback you have is valuable. Please note that the comment fields under each entry are open but that comments do not appear immediately.

We have presented the show with each class as a separate post, with comments available on each class. One warning though - we have had over 180 entries, and you might like to take the stroll through it with a cup of tea (or something much stronger - Ed), for fortification! If in doubt, just keep scrolling on and don't forget to click the "Older Posts" button to move to the next page of classes …in addition, with so many entries, things can go wrong; while we are sure that we have all entries displayed, if yours is missing please accept our apologies and let us know so that we can correct it!

Anyway, on with the show ….

Summer Show - Prizes and Notes

We have collated the points (1st = 3 points, 2nd = 2 points, 1st = 1 point) and the awards are below. Congratulations to all the winners, though I am sure they will agree that the taking part is most of the fun!

Lady Burnett Bowl (Winner of floral arrangment Class 1)	Jean Goddard
Bennett Cup (Winner of the miniature floral art, Class 2)	Liz Brooks
Brux Rose Bowl (Most points in the rose classes 4-9)	Karen Sorensen
Overall Show Winner (Most points overall)	Jeremy Ball

Although our original schedule specified classes in more detail, stating (for example) the usual "1 vase, 3 stems" etc, we decided to relax this for the online show for many of the classes, allowing pictures of roses still on the bush, or pictures of shrubs rather than a vase of their stems. We felt that picking all exhibits when they were not going to be brought to the hall was a little demanding - although classes that needed to be in vases etc (such as floral art) remained so.

In addition, judging has generally been on the exhibit, not on the quality of the photograph (although sometimes presentation is important!). Therefore, overexposure of a photograph did not necessarily reduce the quality of the exhibit.

Class 1 - Floral Art Arrangement

Flower and foliage in own container, max size 2 ft x 2ft (on trust!).
Flowers need not have been grown by exhibitor.

Please click on any image to enlarge it.

Entry 01/01

"Thank You NHS and Carers".
Social Distancing Inspection by the Gnome Office.

Entry 01/02

Entry 01/03 - FIRST PRIZE

Entry 01/04 - SECOND PRIZE

Entry 01/05 - THIRD PRIZE

Entry 01/06

Class 2 - Miniature exhibit of flowers in your own container not to exceed 4" in height and diameter, in own container

Although some entrants supplied a second photograph including a ruler, we have
taken an honesty approach to the size of the exhibits.
This class is a favourite of the Show Secretary and her husband, the Blogmaster.

Please click on any image to enlarge it.

Entry 02/01

Entry 02/02

Entry 02/03

Entry 02/04

Entry 02/05

Entry 02/06

Entry 02/07 - SECOND PRIZE

Entry 02/08

Entry 02/09

Entry 02/10

Entry 02/11

Entry 02/12

Entry 02/13 - THIRD PRIZE

Entry 02/14

Entry 02/15 - FIRST PRIZE

Entry 02/16

Class 3 - Vase of Cut Flowers From Your Garden

Please click on any image to enlarge it.

Entry 03/01 - SECOND PRIZE

Entry 03/02 - FIRST PRIZE

Entry 03/03

Entry 03/04

Entry 03/05 - THIRD PRIZE

Entry 03/06

Classes 4 and 6 - Roses, Large Flowered

Please note that as we are accepting photos of roses on bushes and are not worrying about the number of stems, classes 4 and 6 (large flowered, 3 stems, may be mixed / large flowered, specimen, same variety) are effectively the same and have therefore been combined.

Large flowered are those which produce a single rose on the end of a stem, typically the old Hybrid Tea classification, of the classic conical shape. This is as opposed to the cluster roses, known as the floribunda, which typically produce a cluster of blooms. It can be difficult to tell from photos and we apologise if any are misclassified as we have mostly accepted entrant's class numbers - nobody's perfect!

Please click on an image to enlarge it.