Flower Show - I Survived

The Windermere Garden Club agreed to have a flower show as an event in the celebration of our town’s 100 anniversary of incorporation. No matter that our snowbird members aren’t back, the club hasn’t put on a show for 11 years, we had only a few months to plan, and lastly, September is not a great month in for plants in Florida. Details, mere details. 

I agreed to create an educational entry with the assumption that it would be a simple trifold board with a few plants in front. Not a big deal. Wrong, our fearless and inexhaustible leader Vicki interpreted the National Garden Club’s rule of “at least 18 square feet” of information to be table area, not vertical display area. By the time I’d become aware that I was covering an 8’ x 30” table, it was too late to back out.

You see, WGC is part of the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs and NGC. Flower shows are standardized and judged by highly trained volunteers. I think the Centennial Committee thought it would just be a bunch of pretty flower arrangements. No! Vicki and her cochair Maureen wrote the schedule, (the list of rules governing the show), then rewrote it after its review by a judge, then submitted it to another judge for final approval. This not easy. The theme was Celebrating Windermere Past and Present, with sub-themes for every category. I got “Celebrating the Land: Central Florida’s Native Plants”.

A big part of NGC and FFGC is education. Boy, did I learn. Too tired to think up an entry, I asked GPT-Chat to create the design. I learned more about AI. I also learned: don’t try to enlarge trifold boards by piecing 2 together, but if you do, buy the same brand, since they are all different thicknesses; don’t use spray glue on foam-core, it raises the coating; don’t use the old brushes you find in your art supplies, buy good ones; start plants months earlier; get on show committee so when the education exhibits get moved and no longer will have a wall to lean against, you hear before you get to the show to set up so you can redo your backdrop. Mostly I learned (did I?) to just say no! All in all, I spent at least 30 hours creating my entry. 


I also agreed to be horticultural placement. Even though at the August WGC meeting I explained how to fill out the entry tags, I’m not sure 1 person did it correctly. Binomial names, common names, what section and class all had to be checked and fixed. Wednesday from 8:00 AM to 6:00 that evening, I set up the staging, helped members with their plants, then checked and rechecked that all were correct on my list so Vicki could have the forms ready for clerks and judges the next morning. I pressed Grant into service since I had no other help. I also set up my educational entry and my 3 horticultural entries. And entered Steph’s 2 plants. 


It turned out wonderfully. Steph won the Horticulture Award of Excellence (best in show), Growers Choice, and a blue ribbon for her carnivorous pitcher plants and another blue for her string-of-turtles (Peperomia prostata). I got a Grower’s Choice and blue for my Lady of the Night orchid (Brassolova nodosa), blue for my maidenhair fern, (Adiantum capillus-veneers), and red for my thread-leaved sundew, (Drosera tracyi) with a judge’s comment that the pot was filthy. True. My educational entry won red.

Have I learned anything? No, my competitive nature has been revived. The FFGC’s convention is April, 2026, with dish gardens and other fun entries. Maybe I should enter.

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