Flower Show goes globalBy Jonathan Batten
Less than 10 months until next year’s show – you might think nothing is happening in the flower show committee tent but we are quietly working away and the dance committee has already booked the band for the dance.
Remembering this year’s show we were pleased to support the HS2 Action Alliance raffle ticket sales at the show which raised £500 for their local funds to fight this diabolical scheme.
Last month you may have seen our contribution amongst the various wonderful arrangements in the church in A Village Life in Flowers. Clearly we are not short of flower arrangers in the village so, if you did something in the church, then come on, let us see you entering the floral art classes in July 2011.
Whilst essentially a local event the fame of the flower show has spread 4,700 miles across the world to Colorado Springs, U S of A. Here’s what our American cousins at the University of Colorado think of it:
“The flower show turns out to be much more than an exhibition of a few potted plants. It’s the occasion when the entire community celebrates and competes in as many village-y ways as it can dream of. Reading the entry forms I learned there were more than 100 categories which would be awarded prizes. These included prizes for three categories of potatoes (four white one variety, four coloured one variety, four salad), prizes for every other garden vegetable, for the best seven pansies arranged in a saucer, the best Acanthus (one in a vase), the best five raspberries on a stalk, the best five bunches of redcurrants, the best container of mixed plants suitable for a patio, the three best tinted hens’ eggs, the best label for my bedroom door created by a child aged 5-7, the best four cup cakes by a kid aged 8-12, best loaf of yeast bread made by the man of the house, best senior dog (over 9), the best rescue dog the judges would most like to take home, the best puppy, and the best sandwich made by a teenager.
The flower show is a window on to the density of domestic life in an English village – true in 2010 and in 1600. There’s a lovely sense of communal life, of pleasure in small things, of keen and friendly competition designed to create festive merriment. It’s all there in The Lee Flower Show.”What more can I say!