2017 National Convention and Daffodil Show – Some Photos

These are a few photos from the 2017 ADS National Convention in Sacramento California.

This artistic flower arrangement and our welcome sign were in the hotel lobby so every guest and visitor saw them when they arrived. This arrangement was done by Janean Guest, Daffodil Show Chairman of the Fortuna (California) Garden Club.  They hold a wonderful daffodil event with dozens of artistic arrangements, and a horticulture daffodil show.  Fortuna is about 250 miles north of San Francisco and many of us Bay Area people bring flowers to the show.  Their show is held in a beautiful redwood lodge overlooking the Eel River, and has a lot of community participation.

I was impressed with the art and imagination of these arrangements.  Notice that the plant on the right has the full root system as part of the “flower”.

 

Maria Krenek, also from the Fortuna Garden Club, and an ADS member who attended her first ADS National Show last year, went all out and designed the following artistic arrangement designed around a gold sluicing box with an authentic gold pan and many daffodils, even bulbs worked in.  I was impressed and  was sad to see it broken down after the show.

The Fortuna Daffodil Show is one of our favorites with perhaps 60 flower arrangements, art from local schools, and they even have music with more harps and harpists than I have ever seen together at one time.  The community really supports their show.  There are daffodils in store windows and banners on main street.  I would say hundreds of visitors come to view the show.  Their Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/FortunaGardenClub/

 

The show check-in desk was manned by volunteers as seen in the following photo.  Behind the desk was Miranda Fay and Maria Krenek.  The person talking to them is our newest Northern California Daffodil Society member Purnima Sreenivasan.

 

I only have a few photos of the show but Kirby Fong and Tom Stettner will have the official show results photos, and Lynn Slackman did all the counts and statistics on awards.  I liked the showroom because it had good overhead lighting and one wall had many windows which helped too.  The room was regulated to 60F or 15.5C so the approx 1700 stems stayed fresh.

 

There were many notable “characters” at the show and I spotted a few but getting anyone to pose for a photo was like “herding cats”.  The first photo has Rose Finnegan, Larry Force, Mitch Carney, and Richard Ezell.  The second photo shows they really were a group and Rose was just checking her phone for a moment in the first photo.

 

The next photo shows some kind of intense discussion between Dianne Mrak and Michael Kuduk who appears to have his own personal giant “K” on his name tag.

 

The following photo is of two of my favorite daffodil people, Suzy Wert from Indiana and Graham Phillips renowned daffodil grower from New Zealand.

 

These are all the show photos I have.  I took them in just a few minutes during a program session break and was so busy I never got back to photographing anything.  The quality of the flowers was very good and the programs and sessions were very interesting.  I particularly liked the Lynn Slackman and Fredrica Lawlor presentation on DaffLibrary.org.  The evening program by Elise Havens on her family’s 70 years of daffodil growing was wonderful.

The convention hotel staff was very friendly and quick to help us.   Our lunches were buffets and very good.  We had a field trip to Marshall Gold Discovery Park at Coloma on Sunday to see where gold was discovered in California in 1849.  It was warm and sunny and I wish I had worn shorts to match Ian Tyler’s with his 2 White-White legs.

 

3 comments for “2017 National Convention and Daffodil Show – Some Photos

  1. Remember you can mouse click any photo thumbnail on Daffnet, DaffSeek, and all of our sites to see the photo enlarged or “zoomed in”.

  2. The person standing in the aisle behind Suzy Wert in the last photo is Dick Ryon, husband of Doris Ryon who’s in the Northern California Daffodil Society.  That’s Richard Ezell on the right near the window.  I can’t tell who the remaining person in the photo is.

Comments are closed.