The Mason County Garden Club hosts a standard flower show every two years, and even though I was gone for 18 months, I managed to not miss one!
For a small club, I think they do a really good job with the shows. They found a larger venue for this one, too. Today, I'll just give you a sort of overview. The first two pictures are simply attractive plant-y decor that welcomed people as they came in the door.
Then you entered the main room. You may recall from all my posts about the Philadelphia Flower Show (and two previous Mason County ones) that the primary focus of a "standard flower show" is competition. This is where all the horticultural exhibits were. Think something like the county fair for 4-H.
I don't fully understand the categories, but one of them was "From the Ground Up," which had bulbs, corms, rhizomes and tubers in it. Within that category, there was a whole row of tuberous begonia entries. Today, I'll just show the line-up to give you an idea of the variety of entries, colors, etc. What I don't understand is if all these begonias would be judged against, say, a single iris (which wouldn't be blooming in July, but just "if.") which would fit in the same category.
Flowering Trees and shrubs included Hydrangeas. The white ones seemed to be organized separately from the colored ones. Here's the white row.
It's July, so there were a lot of lilies.
There were whole categories for just foliage. There were ferns, conifers, and hosta. Look at the range of sizes and colors of hosta!
Another room had photography and educational displays, and the third room had things like I show you all the time from Philadelphia- place settings, small niches, etc. I don't know if a small club chooses from a list of the categories they want to offer for competition. Obviously a small group can't have entries like the front porches, outdoor offices, etc that the Convention Center has room for. Not to mention that a small club needs to come up with a viable number of entries in each category.
There is plenty of good material here for a couple more days of blog posts. I'll probably show you some winners tomorrow, and then some of my favorites after that.
For a parting shot, here's the blue ribbon entry in "A Season in the Sun" Flowering Annuals. I think maybe a subcategory of one species in a planter or something. This is a New Guinea Impatiens. Stunning!
In other news, I got "in the zone" on one of my priority projects and worked hard on that all day. That means I didn't move around very much, so I'm a bit stiff. I better switch off with some gardening again tomorrow, but I always feel that if I'm really in a mood to work on something I'm supposed to be doing, I should take full advantage of that!
 | See MCGC Show 2021 |
2 comments:
Since I don't know a whole lot about plants, I wouldn't understand a thing about the judging for things like this. Those potted impatients sure are pretty.
Ann- well I don't understand the judging very well myself. The judges have special training, and the come from other places. No one judges their own shows. It sounds really specialized.
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