Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
SRGC Shows and Events => Events => Topic started by: ranunculus on March 21, 2012, 06:55:43 PM
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May we remind forum members that the East Lancashire AGS Show takes place this Saturday 24th March 2012 at The Riverside, Whitworth Civic Hall, Market Street, (A671) WHITWORTH, near Rochdale. OL12 8DP and that you are all VERY, VERY WELCOME!!!
We can offer over 130 classes, excellent nurseries, superb raffle/tombola, free parking, wonderful refreshments and that unique East Lancashire welcome and atmosphere.
Have a safe and trouble free journey - we look forward to seeing you. :D
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Ooh! For a minute there I thought I read 130 kinds of refreshments..... I was thinking that was a tad excessive, even for a piglet like me.... but I see I was jumping to conclusions... it's 130 classes - may I send hopes that all 130 are well filled with great examples of the show growers' art?
Weather seems to be pretty good in many parts of the country right now so I hope that will mean record turnouts for both East Lancs AGS and the new SRGC Kincardine Show.
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Talking of refreshments, I assume the breakfast butties will be to the usual astonishing standard.....can't wait :D
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Talking of refreshments, I assume the breakfast butties will be to the usual astonishing standard.....can't wait :D
I will be astonished as well, Martin! ;D :P :P :P
We have sausages as well this year ... get your order in early!
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We decided that for the first time since it became a National show we would give it a miss. We are going to Waterperry instead. Wish I could do both but no way can I drive those sort of distances these days.
Hope the show is as good as it usually is and look forward to the photos afterwards.
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Is there a name for a bevy of soldanellas? A fringe party perhaps, or a charm. They must be the daintiest and prettiest of alpine flowers. Very good wishes for the Show from Kent.
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Is there a name for a bevy of soldanellas? A fringe party perhaps, or a charm. They must be the daintiest and prettiest of alpine flowers. Very good wishes for the Show from Kent.
It's got to be a fairy ring, Tim! :D
They come a very close second to high mountain buttercups in my league table.
Your good wishes are much appreciated.
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Great thread Cliff.
I can confirm that butties will be available as usual - our fridge is currently stuffed withat least a porkers worth of bacon! :P
We also expect the usual crop of excellent cakes and sandwiches for lunch as well as potato pie with red cabbage and mushy peas. Real East Lancs fare.
weather seems set fair and a great day is anticipated.
Hope to see you all there, even those of us who are not! ;D
Cheers,
JohnnyD
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Johnny, this is yet another example of all the extra work that is involved in making a show a success... over and above preparing a show hall ( and tidying up afterwards) and receiving the plants for judging etc etc etc etc..... there is a mountain of
bacon errrrrrr, work to be done before the show can be enjoyed by exhibitors and visitors alike.
I'm just taking this chance to applaud everyone who contributes to all the shows around the country to enable such spectacles to take place.
Three Cheers for the Show Helpers!! 8)
[attach=1] [attach=2] [attach=3]
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Heartiest congratulations to Show Secretary; Carol Kellett and her amazing team on another magnificent East Lancashire AGS national show at Whitworth, near Rochdale today. The weather proved as glorious as many of the superb exhibits and the full and colourful benches attracted many enthusiastic visitors to the lovely hall.
A first batch of images to set the scene. The Farrer Medal was won by Nottingham's Robert Rolfe with a stunning Draba ossetica - his medal winning exhibit and a photo of Robert open this post...
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More from East Lancashire Show today ...
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A gorgeous Fritillaria davidii (and some close-ups) shown by Brian and Jo Walker ...
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What super shots, Cliff.... feeels like I'm right there.... I think it's the smell of butties coming from the kitchen....where I spot the Dowers hard at work. ;D
Congrats to Robert for his medal.... chubby sort of plant.
Looking at that class in another photo, it must have been a blow to the person with the fat Sax. marginata in the same class to only get a third :o
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In the last one of the first set is the bloke in the foreground in the stripy jumper saying "if I nip out whilst they're all talking will they miss this one?"
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In the last one of the first set is the bloke in the foreground in the stripy jumper saying "if I nip out whilst they're all talking will they miss this one?"
Probably! ;D
The 'bloke' in question is top exhibitor, judge, photographer, lecturer and all-round good guy Jim Almond from Shrewsbury, who was carrying an exhibit to the photographic area to be recorded for posterity. Whether he brought it back is also open to question!! ;D ;D
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What a great day - and again a super crop of eight mini-gardens, four in each of Open and B Secrions.
Pics follow, again without attribution, a general shot of the 'three in a pan for effect' class, and a pic of the kitchen staff with a pile of Lancashire oven bottom cakes, which made great bacon and sausage butties.
Thanks to everyone for their help - particularly at the end, when all tables were cleared and stacked by 4.30.
JohnnyD
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What a terrific day ;D Carol and her team triumphed again, wonderfully full benches and plenty of visitors, sunshine as well as tater pie and red cabbage :P what more could you ask for.
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Now that's how I'd like my blocks of tufa in the garden to turn out! This was only planted a week or two ago and needs quite a few more plants.
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Nice start Tim, but please remember most of the mini-gardens are made up of pieces of tufa to look like one big lump.
This means it is much easier to find a spot for plants to tuck in.
With a large piece it takes a long time to establish good sized plants.
JohnnyD
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Those gardens are gorgeous! It must be a very frightening proposition to move them, let alone transport them to a show, especially if they consist of several lumps of tufa. Do people fasten the tufa lumps together in some way?
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Hi Lori,
I am sure that JohnnyD. will respond to your query as soon as he logs on (and he has transported more mini-gardens around the UK than anyone else).
Some more images from East Lancs 2012 ...
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... And a few more ...
AGS President; Val Lee presenting two AGS Medals and a Certificate of Merit to Frank & Barbara Hoyle.
Val Lee presenting the Allanson Trophy to Norma Pagdin.
Brian Russ receiving the Jeanne Finch Memorial Trophy.
Tony Taziker collects the Merlewood Trophy.
Robert Rolfe collects the well-deserved Farrer Medal.
... And just to illustrate how much detail we here at East Lancashire put into our shows ... even the hand dryers are in character (with thanks to MartinR. for pointing this out)!
More images to follow when time allows.
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Great report Cliff !!
I'm just about to try and build 1 or 2 mini-gardens... there are some great examples here !!
Thanks a lot !
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Brilliant pictures. I have never seen benches so full and full of first class plants. Amazing to see 8).
Angie :)
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Many thanks Luc and Angie.
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In the last one of the first set is the bloke in the foreground in the stripy jumper saying "if I nip out whilst they're all talking will they miss this one?"
He forgot there was security in place, in the form of "C. Booker Candid Cameras Ltd."
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In the last one of the first set is the bloke in the foreground in the stripy jumper saying "if I nip out whilst they're all talking will they miss this one?"
He forgot there was security in place, in the form of "C. Booker Candid Cameras Ltd."
AKA 'Buttercup Surveillance' :D
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And a fantastic job your firm did Cliff. A truly wonderful depiction - for us - of a magnificent Show. The East Lancashire AGS Show is the only one I've attended, in person - in 1981! so I feel I have a personal interest in it. ;D
What amazing plants and mini-gardens. I have to say for me perhaps the most wonderful was the soft blue Pulsatilla, followed, of course, by Frit davidii but EVERYTHING looked to be grown to prfection and the pots packed so tight on the benches that the organizers must have been thrilled with the entry numbers.
What's a "bottom oven cake?" In my case it would be when it slipped as I took it out and redeposited itself on the bottom, to get burnt before I could retrieve it, and burning myself in the process. ???
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And a fantastic job your firm did Cliff. A truly wonderful depiction - for us - of a magnificent Show. The East Lancashire AGS Show is the only one I've attended, in person - in 1981! so I feel I have a personal interest in it. ;D
What amazing plants and mini-gardens. I have to say for me perhaps the most wonderful was the soft blue Pulsatilla, followed, of course, by Frit davidii but EVERYTHING looked to be grown to prfection and the pots packed so tight on the benches that the organizers must have been thrilled with the entry numbers.
What's a "bottom oven cake?" In my case it would be when it slipped as I took it out and redeposited itself on the bottom, to get burnt before I could retrieve it, and burning myself in the process. ???
Many thanks for the kind comments, Lesley. May I ask you to search your memory bank again, as I'm certain it would have been the East Cheshire show that you attended? The East Lancashire show didn't begin until 1988 at the earliest (and then only as a local show).
An 'oven bottom' cake is a plain tea cake (bap) that is cooked on the bottom of the oven. Like a soft flattish bread roll without a hard crust.
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An 'oven bottom' cake is a plain tea cake (bap) that is cooked on the bottom of the oven. Like a soft flattish bread roll without a hard crust.
... and flipped over halfway through baking to achieve the characteristic dark circles on each side..... lighter than air and sometimes spoken of as 'England's answer to the Bagel', I'm told, by a Lancashire friend of the Hebrew faith.
(Amazing what we can learn from our friends, ain't it?)
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Oh yes Cliff, you're right, tho' I had to go back to old slide boxes to check. It WAS East Cheshire and on the way home to Huddersfield we went to Chatsworth. (Or maybe went there while the judging was on and went back later to see the show proper and collect the entries). How terrible that one's (my) memory can let one down so badly and EMBARRASSINGLY :-[
A programme on TV last night was talking about this and about how memory does its own thing, as it were and performs to remember what one WANTS to remember and not necessarily remember what actually happened. Words to that effect anyway.
Thanks for the cake note. Must try something like that.
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Nothing whatsoever to be embarrassed about Lesley, I am constantly searching my fading brain cells for half-forgotten facts, quarter-remembered names and wholly evaporated inklings. I discover an extensive vacuum, ever-scurrying tumbleweed and an evocation of a desolate and expansive prairie populated quite spasmodically by the most glorious of buttercups!!! :D
Pass the G&T please!
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..........and on the way home to Huddersfield...........
Lesley I know we share an age but didn't know we shared a birthplace, are we related? ;D
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Nothing whatsoever to be embarrassed about Lesley, I am constantly searching my fading brain cells for half-forgotten facts, quarter-remembered names and wholly evaporated inklings. I discover an extensive vacuum, ever-scurrying tumbleweed and an evocation of a desolate and expansive prairie populated quite spasmodically by the most glorious of buttercups!!! :D
Pass the G&T please!
;D ;D ;D
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No I don't think so David, delightful though that would be and I'd feel greatly privileged. ;D My friend Margaret and I were staying in Huddersfield for a few days with an AGS member called, at that time, Rita Walker and we helped Rita with her entries, the fetching and carrying, the nearest I've been to taking an active part in an AGS show. Very soon after we came home, Rita and her husband separated and divorced and Rita remarried, becoming Rita something else (a really unusual name that :)) and I've no idea whether she went on growing alpines or not. I hope so. But because we were in Huddersfield for a few days, it was the closest to home we'd had for several weeks.
During that time we also visited Geoff Rollinson in Holmfirth and as well as Androsace alpina in a stone wall, I particularly remember a beautiful Doberman dog - a lady - who was of a nervous disposition with strangers and she hid behind the sofa.
We also met two likely lads (M and I were 38 at the time and fancy free) but they were both overly fixated on something called the Milk Race and so the relationships, such as they were, were never going to flourish. ;D
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Huddersfield lad, MILK!!! it doesn't add up ;D
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Huddersfield lad, MILK!!! it doesn't add up ;D
That would be MILK STOUT, David! :D Probably imported from Bristol or across the Irish Sea.
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We also met two likely lads (M and I were 38 at the time and fancy free) but they were both overly fixated on something called the Milk Race and so the relationships, such as they were, were never going to flourish. ;D
Take a trip down memory lane, Lesley.....
Milk Race 1981
00-00-0000 12º stage Harrogate - Blackpool 131.3 km Mark Bell
00-00-0000 11º stage Richmond - Harrogate 172.8 km Stein Braathen
00-00-0000 10º stage Darlington - Newcastle 124.7 km Jiri Bartolsik
00-00-0000 9º stage Scarborough - Middlesborough 91.9 km Dag Erik Pedersen
00-00-0000 8º stage York - Scarborough 121.3 km Andrej Vedernikov
00-00-0000 7º stage Leeds - York 165.5 km Mark Bell
00-00-0000 6º stage part b Seacroft - Seacroft 40.2 km Hans Petter Ødegaard
00-00-0000 6º stage part a Lincoln - Seacroft 123.7 km Adam Zagajewski
00-00-0000 5º stage Nottingham - Skegness 136.3 km Phil Thomas
00-00-0000 4º stage part b Sandiacre - Sandiacre 45 km Håkan Larsson
00-00-0000 4º stage part a Coventry - Sandiacre 131.1 km Zbigniew Szczepkowski
00-00-0000 3º stage Merthyr Tydfill - Coventry 117.4 km Phil Thomas
00-00-0000 2º stage Bournemouth - Weston s/Mare 176.4 km Morten Sæther
00-00-0000 1º stage Brighton - Bournemouth 158.5 km Steve Joughin
00-00-0000 Prologue 3.2 km Hans Petter Ødegaard
General Classification Sergei Krivotschew
http://www.cyclingarchives.com/voorloopfiche.php?wedstrijdvoorloopid=1264 ;)
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Lesley - I think all that memory needs is to be tickled; after all it's our own not someone else's! After you have managed to assimilate the AGS Encyclopaedia there's not too much room for anything else, which is why no-one knows the name of a plant when you ask them!
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Lori, the tufa tends to stay in place by simply packing it firmly onto and into the compost.
Mind you, I reckon Peter Hoods creation must be held together with rubber bands! See below. :P
It is simply superb.
JohnnyD
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Oops - that is not Peters.
This is!!!!!!
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Huddersfield lad, MILK!!! it doesn't add up ;D
Yes, as Maggi has pointed out - so graphically - it was a bike race, sponsored, I suppose by a milk company.
My golly Maggi, there are some good names there. I guess I'll have to practice pronunciation on these if I'm to survive in the Czech Republic. The Poles have wonderful names don't they? Some of their conductors and other musicians are real mouthsful and challenging for the mono-lingual NZer.
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Lori, the tufa tends to stay in place by simply packing it firmly onto and into the compost.
Mind you, I reckon Peter Hoods creation must be held together with rubber bands! See below. :P
It is simply superb.
JohnnyD
Yikes, seems solid enough for something stationary, but potentially precarious to move around! Thanks for the details, Johnny.
Yes, all the photos shown are amazing, especially the tufa gardens, and especially Peter Hood's in particular! Thanks for posting them!
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No rubber bands, John, though there is a cocktail stick or two in there somewhere!Last week after the trip to Blackpool and back, the lump at the top right, with Androsace villosa growing out of it, was only attached by the plant roots - but a little engineering work in the week meant it was perfectly stable at Rochdale, and still stable when I got back home!
Thanks for your appreciation Lori, but I should point out that the judges still prefer John Dower's garden. The schedule looks for established planting.
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Cocktail sticks eh? I need to make a note of that! ;)
J.
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Having finally found some free time to process my pictures here are some more shots to supplement the work of Cliff & John.
Anemone caucasica
Fritillaria ariana
Ipheion Rolf Fiedler
large 6 pan
Ornithogalum sibthorpii
Orostachys spinosa
Primula Angela Burrow
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Part 2.
Primula Crusader
Primula Ellen Page
Primula Lepus
Primula Lilac Fairy
Rosularia serpentinica
Saxifraga columnaris
Saxifraga desoulavyii
Shortia uniflora
small 6 pan