It’s June as I write this and the garden is lush and green with flowers. Although it looks beautiful, most of my activities focus on weeding, supporting, pruning and cutting back (and weeding).
It’s not very exciting or interesting, so I thought instead I’d look ahead to our Autumn Show on Saturday 3 September at Dedham’s Assembly Rooms. Now’s a great time to help you think about submitting an entry or two. There’s no cost to enter and you don’t need to be a member of the Society.
The autumn show schedule has separate sections dedicated to fruit and vegetables, as well as the flowers, floral art, cookery and photography we see in spring. In several of these classes you’ll need to exhibit 3, 5, sometimes 10 of a kind, which can be harder than you think. However there are plenty of classes that if you have a small garden or just pots and containers, you can enter and have a chance to win!
You can exhibit ‘a vase of mixed herbs’ and only need three varieties. Chances are there’s a some basil on a window ledge or mint or chives. You might have sage, a lavender shrub or rosemary bush in a pot outside. If so, then gather some sprigs for the vase you use more than three stems in your arrangement, just make sure you have three different kinds of herb.
You’ll need to find 10 of the same cultivar to enter the blackberries or raspberries classes and they’ll need to look as near-identical as possible. The advantage of blackberries though is that you can use hedgerow varieties – so you don’t even need to grow them in your garden or allotment to enter this class! It also means you don’t need to worry about cultivars: just raid as many brambles as you can get to.
Remember to keep the stalks on though – the exhibiting world has a great fear of supermarket perfection accidentally making it onto the show bench.
Now. Flowers. If our spring show is all about daffodils and bulbs, autumn is all about the dahlia and the rose.
There are five classes for dahlias and it’s worth doing a bit of reading to understand the difference between them. Beginners might prefer to avoid the pompon class, as it’s not easy to tell the difference to ball dahlias, and know that ‘three single blooms’ means the shape of the flower not just one flower per stem.
Instead, if it’s your first time I think the best dahlia class is ‘two vases, three blooms in each, any cultivar(s)’ as it’s the most flexible. Although it’s not specifically stated, most (but not all) exhibitors make the content of each vase identical. You could try six of the same dahlia or two each of three different kinds. The best thing is that you don’t need to know the difference between decorative, cactus, pompon or ball, you just need to take them from the same plant.
The rose section is another that anyone should feel able to enter. There are roses for containers and small spaces as well as the border, but know that this section is highly competitive among your fellow villagers.
You could do a bit of research into the different kinds – the hybrid tea (HT), the floribunda (clusters of blooms on a stem) and shrub – but you don’t need to do that if you enter ‘five roses in a vase’. They can be any kind and any colours, just make sure there’s five. Give ‘em a bit of a zuzh and you’re done!
There are plenty of other classes and if you can’t grow, then bake or submit a photo instead. It’s only a village show at the end of the day (yes, any old vase really will do). So don’t be shy, give it a go. It’s free to enter and we’d love to see you.
Dedham Horticultural Society 