RHS Gold medal awarded at Gardeners' World Live flower show!

We were thrilled to be awarded another RHS Gold medal for our exhibit in the Floral Marquee at Gardeners' World Live Flower Show at the NEC, Birmingham recently.  All the displays have been extremely hard work this year, even more than usual because of the dreadful weather we have been enduring.  Little flower colour in the nursery and strong winds, heavy rain and lack of sun has meant that many plants that should be in flower or have been in flower are still in bud!

The display Paeonias had to be taken to our house and we left the heating on day and night for two days to ensure that we had enough blooms out for the judging. (Image left Paeonia 'Gay Paree').  We didn't feel that this was cheating the show visitors as in normal weather conditions the Paeonias would have been in flower anyway.  Bob, Kate and Jen built this display and arrived on site to find that the RHS crew had actually built our staging larger than we had asked for!  As we were struggling for enough plants to fill the original size this caused a bit of a headache.  Plans had to be changed right at the last minute but they still managed to bring home a GOLD medal.  Also the brand new hire van broke down on judging morning as Bob needed to return to the nursery for extra moss to complete the display.  Luckily, the hire firm we use delivered another vehicle but everything had to be unloaded from one van and re-loaded into the other van.  We hadn't time to wait for the breakdown service to arrive and fix the vehicle.  (Image right Paeonia 'Coral Sunset'.)

I felt that this display, the largest that we had ever built, was also one of the best as there were paths meandering through the display from different points.  As the paths were not straight there were lots of interesting vistas created all round the display.