Southport Flower Show 19th August 2015

   With everything running about two weeks late because of the cold spring, and growing on a high altitude plot, Southport was always going to be a struggle for me this year. In fact I only managed to put two spikes on the bench and scored nul points.There were some nice flowers and I enjoyed helping others to stage them. A series of videos about some of the classes is available on the British Gladiolus Society Facebook Group pages. Serena and Careless were in abundance and some nice seedlings from Graham Anderson. Peter Forrow won most classes but not all with the judges stopping a clean sweep by awarding the nine spike Championship to Terry Morris and the single prim to Jim Moore.

After that it was home to prepare for Hartlepool on the weekend.

Always next year with the daffs; border seedlings save the day; glads all behind.

     After Catforth, things went generally down the drain for me. I had yet another horrible chest infection which kept me in bed when I should have been on top of the flowers, and I was so rough I couldn't even get to Colne, where Tom scooped everything in sight with excellent flowers while mine sat unwatered and dying in the hot glasshouses. I managed a few of the smaller daffs at Tottington but really the year was a dead loss on the daffodil front for me.
    Similar neglect was suffered by my borders which got potted on miles too late after I  recovered. When it came to the shows, the only borders I had in bloom were seedlings for the Yorkshire Society Show at Doncaster. I managed three 1sts four 2nds and two 3rds but generally the entry was thin. Phil Cross, Liam Leger, Bill Stokes and myself supplied the borders and Phil had an excellent new pink that he had bred which was christened Mystic Ray Knight on the day.

                                     Mystic Ray Knight from Phil Cross, a lovely new pink.

                            Liam Leger had some nice flowers: this is Billy Boy, bred by Bill Stokes.

                                              Liam again with a nice vase of Crimson Comet.

I was second and third in the single clove with a couple of small seedlings. Liam had a good Grace's Scarlet Clove.

                             This was another seedling in the single  White Ground Fancy class.

                                     Another ruby coloured clove seedling without much form to it.

                                                             A fair WGF seedling.

An apricot ground fancy seedling that I will probably get rid of at the end of the season.

                                                               Yet another seedling.

                                                          A nice seedling from Phil Cross.



   The following weekend I was on my own at Atherton for the Lancs and Cheshire Carnation Society Early Show as Phil and Barrie were up north judging in Newcastle. I managed to do all the classes but again there were only two flowers that weren't new seedlings. It's no fun being unopposed on the show bench. At least I kept the borders section alive. The PFs were similarly late and apart from a tremendous set of Joanne's Highlight from Brian Dean they were good but not outstanding. The pinks were there in numbers - twice as many entries as last year. I think there were 200 odd entries altogether in the show.

A better show than last year at Atherton with loads more pinks.

Only me in the borders section unfortunately.

Three WGF seedlings were a bit blousy.

Apart from the one Billy Boy in the middle of the front vase, these were all seedlings.

WGF seedling

Brian Dean liked the heavy clove scent on this seedling and kept sniffing it.

Pinks in abundance.

Brian Dean with a fabulous nine Joanne's Highlight: best exhibit in the show.

I told Graham Davis that this pink of his would win the class despite the numerous entries and of course it did!

Another view of the show.

This apricot self has a slight clove scent. However, the centre is a bit darker and I'm not sure whether it will make it as a self.

Some of my new red seedlings have good round shapes to them. and plenty of petals.

This one smells very clovey as well.

Next year, the Atherton date goes back to its original 23rd July. Let's hope therefore that other border growers can be there. I am very tempted get a few PFs so that even if my borders are early or late, I can still get plenty of stuff on the tables.

Today (25th July) I did my first border crosses of the year. I hope to get a lot of seed this year. Seeing a new seedling flower for the first time is an absolute joy for me. Every one is a surprise and a delight. I was amazed to get so many nice clove-scented seedlings this time. I will probably save and propagate further around seven or eight of these.

Only a few weeks and the new gladiolus seedlings will be flowering for the first time: these will all be prims and 200s this year, whereas next year I will have hundreds of new 300s and 400s to look at plus a few 200s (hopefully some green ones).

As for the gladiolus shows, I suspect we are going to struggle with the early shows: Huddersfield is a fortnight away and I have no sign of a spike in any of the beds. The concertina patterns on the leaves bear witness to the cold nights in May and even frosts. So it is a late year. And as they always say in a late year, 'Harrogate is going to be very good'. We'll see. Still time for a heatwave or floods.

Catforth Daffodil Show 21st March 2015

  Maybe the poor light over the winter months has had an effect on the daffodils, but whatever the cause, our flowers are generally behind this year. I was unable to show anything at Catforth where I usually have a few. Others were in a similar situation and it was left to those who live nearer to the venue in their slightly more favourable climate to come up with flowers: a total of 229 blooms in fact, which was respectable under the circumstances. 

   Above can be seen a special class for pots of Avalanche which was well supported and brought perfume to the Village Hall.

   Some classes which would normally have many entries were not so strong this year.

However, attendance by the public was good and the sixty-five prizes in the raffle meant that £155 was raised for charity on just that part besides all the other money.

  The children stole the show with a great display of daffodil-inspired artwork which gave the judges a real headache.

As for the flowers, there are other shows next month that will keep us busy. This first show is always an enjoyable day with excellent hospitality and organisation from Tom Alty and Andrew Clark.

Harrogate Autumn Show 12th Sept 2014

   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.

The BGS National, Poynton, 23rd August, 2014

   Ken Bacon and myself judged the National this year. It was interesting to judge: there were few really good prims, probably because of the weather, the 300s continued to be under-represented but there were some good 200s. Above all, there were some awesome spikes in the bigger sizes.  Twisted tops were a feature of some exhibits, giving the impression that staking had been left a little late. 

  Best 500 was this beefy Of Singular Beauty from Mick Jones. It had apparently been in a cooler for a week, but it held well at least until the end of the judging and deserved the award. There were some good samples of this cultivar at the show.

Grand Champion was Nigel's August Days. It was a very close run thing between this and Nigel's Babsbill, another yellow with fabulous form that was just a little young.

Best 300 was this Cream of the Crop which the camera has decided should be yellow when it isn't.

Best 200 was this Psolum. It had some faults but still beat the opposition.

Best British was this Mac from Graham Anderson. He had some excellent spikes at the show and deserved to be among the awards.

Best Primulinus was a real headache for the judges. In the end we went for the middle one of these three Marina below by Trevor Fawcett.

The Best Novice went to Len with this very clean and well-grown Rotary. His other spikes were also very good.

This is the Babsbill which was also  in contention for Grand Champion.

Graham Anderson produced a very fine exhibit with these six George's Choice. It was very nearly best exhibit but the back left spike was rather under flowered. An impressive set of spikes.

The three 200s below were another very good exhibit: two Petite and one Black Lash from Nigel.

In the seedling section, this new yellow from Trevor was close to winning

but in the end the award went to a new primulinus whose colours don't show up well in this photo.

Another very impressive spike was this Legacy from Colin Parkes. I hope to see more of this in the future.

In the 200s both Mick Jones and Peter Forrow exhibited a spike of Lauren, a pretty flower with potential.

As you would expect, there were plenty of spikes of Of Singular Beauty and these were better in my opinion than those I saw at other shows this year.

Graham Anderson's exhibit in the Blake was extremely good and very close to the winning three by Nigel. 

Colin Parkes produced a great exhibit with these four.

Mac from Graham Anderson certainly has the wow factor and it is good to see very good spikes in this colour on the bench.

I would say this National produced better spikes than last year's and the public had plenty to look at. Thanks to Poynton Show for accommodating the BGS National and thanks to all the exhibitors who made the judges' job a pleasure.