Harrogate places heavy demands upon exhibitors in that it is held when the seasons are starting to change. For me, the week is usually one of driving rain, or frost or heavy wind. It was a rare occurrence this year to be able to cut flowers in bright sunshine rather than a raincoat. However, the early season meant there wasn't much left to cut. I am normally reduced to floret box exhibits and the odd later seedling anyway and having entered Huddersfield, Southport, Ramsbottom and the Midland, I was very lucky to have a half-decent spike of Huron Silk left and some other bits and pieces.
What is always enjoyable at Harrogate is the fact that many exhibitors bring more unusual flowers for the public to see and baskets and floret boxes give added interest. There were a couple of nice baskets on display as can be seen below.
My seedlings were mostly under-flowered, and I was rather disappointed that a green one that I had brought steadfastly refused to open. Apparently it did so on the last day of the show.
Here it is just showing colour on the Friday:
The seedling class is always well filled at Harrogate and there were some nice colours on display:
The floret boxes presented a wide range of flowers. The smokey below that I'd brought didn't get anywhere but provided a talking point amongst the public. At least the florets were all single lipped.
The other box I put in wasn't up to much but all that I had.
I';d brought two prims which I had hoped would 'stick' and not open further, as most of my stuff does at this time of year, but of course they went and opened another floret just before judging so didn't stand an earthly.
Mick Jones can be relied upon to bring some good looking glads to the table at Harrogate and this year I really liked his 'Warpaint', a tall, rangey 200 in yellow and red that provided a great splash of colour in an otherwise totally boring class of mostly dumpy spikes.
My Huron Silk managed a yellow card third out of twelve in the single 300 class below. It is encouraging that 300s were more numerous than usual here this year.
Thanks to Maureen Jones for running the show and to Nigel for sorting out the judges.
No comments:
Post a Comment