What the World Needs Now Is... A Flower Show

Flower shows are big deals for
garden clubs

Spring is the season for flower shows. Here in New England, seemingly every other town’s garden club has one in May or June.  There are multiple classes of floral designs to admire, plus table after table of amateur horticulture: irises, peonies, flowering branches, early roses, and every annual imaginable.  Notices of the event go out in the local paper and signs appear on Main Street inviting the public to partake of a delight for the senses.

The flower shows we're used to won't
work in a time of social distancing

But not this year.  In a season of shelter-in-place orders and social distancing mandates, town garden clubs put a giant ‘X’ though the balance of their 2019-2020 schedule back in early March, including not just monthly meetings and road trips but special events such as flower shows.  They’ll re-group and (fingers crossed) start fresh in September. 

At a flower show, everything is up
close and personal - a no-no in 2020

The plight of local clubs extends to state and regional garden club organizations.  I had been invited to speak at several conventions this spring and I noted in their schedules that each had a major flower show attached to the listing of events.  Not a single one of those shows took place as scheduled.  And, the disappointment went all the way to National Garden Clubs, Inc., which cancelled its May convention for the first time ever.  It, too, had an enormous flower show as one of its attractions (Betty was part of the show’s committee).

Sometimes, though, you can’t keep a good idea down.  When the word went out that the NGC convention was to be a victim of Covid-19, the organization’s president, Gay Austin, made a phone call to a guy named David Robson and asked the question: “what would it take to make the flower show an on-line event?”

David Robson, directing the
building of a peacock

David is a retired Extension Horticultural Specialist at the University of Illinois, and so has a certain amount of spare time on his hands.  He is also one of the behind-the-scenes forces in the flower show world.  He could have told Ms. Austin, ‘search me’ or ‘it’s impossible’, but he did neither.  Instead, he started thinking about the logistics of holding a standard flower show (the term of art for one that adheres to a very specific set of rules) on the internet.  There was, naturally, no precedent.  It has never been attempted before.

He then went a step further and wondered what would happen if, instead of having just the 30 or so floral designers who were to have participated in the original event, plus the hundred or so people who might have brought horticultural entries to Milwaukee (where the convention was to have been held), NGC invited the entire garden club world to participate?

Clip the best flowers in
your garden, take photos...

That is exactly what is going to happen:  Download the schedule.  Choose one of the seven horticultural categories (including flowers, foliage, and arboreals among others).  Photograph your entry in the approved manner, and email it with your entry form (there is no entry fee). Your entry will be examined by accredited flower show judges.

It’s such an audacious idea it just might work. 

I am pleased to count David Robson as a friend (he’s the guy who hooked me into building peacocks in the rain at the Newport Flower Show last year).  When he called to ask Betty to be part of the committee (and, yes, Betty is in the schedule as chair of one of the horticultural sections), I broke into the conversation to ask him how many horticultural entries he thought Betty might end up reviewing.

“It depends on how successful the show is,” he replied, verbally bobbing and weaving.

“Well,” I asked, “what constitutes the low end of ‘successful’?”

“A couple of hundred entries,” he allowed.

“Then, what’s the high end?” I pressed.

After a few moments for contemplation, he replied, “The server crashes.”

This could be yours!

I’m rooting for the server to crash.  I’ll bet that between now and June 15th (the period entries will be accepted), your garden is ablaze with color.  Assuming your garden club is NGC-affiliated, clip the best half dozen of those flowers or branches, rig up a white board to put behind them and a clear bottle to put them in.  Take the required six photos of each specimen as described in the guide.  Fill in the entry form. Email it off.

Judging will take place between June 16 and June 30, with winners notified shortly thereafter.  And I hope this time next month I'll be writing about what happened when David’s server crashed.