The N.C. Daffodil Show had their first Design Classes.
Is there a National Garden Show or Design Rules to
follow? There must be some general rules to have this
part of the NC Daffodil Show entrants to obtain credit
for their participation. What about a National Garden
Club Organization? I am new to Design and need
some guidelines for the Design area of the show.
Thanks: Fran Higgins
Fran,
Here in Minnesota we adopted the Federated Garden Club rules as they have the most folks certified as judges in our area. However, you should check in your area for whichever group has the most judges as National Garden Clubs is stronger in other parts of the country. Prior to modifying our design rules, point-scoring categories and design descriptions, we had been using design judges from the Minnesota Horticultural Society. Each group has it own set of rules and, to some extent, terminology to describe the design type you are asking for in a particular class. Our group even purchased the new Judges Handbook from Federated a couple of years ago as a reference for our show schedule. We now have a student judge from Federated in our group, so we ask her opinion on our design class descriptions. Her famous comment is that you don’t want to confuse the design judges with unclear terminology! Participation also seems to increase if you advertise your design section to the group from whom you recruit design judges; it can then serve as an official show for Federated folks in addition to ADS. And, most importantly, you need to supply stems to the designers, going so far as to have them call if they want a specific color or size or quantity of same/similar flower for their exhibit. This practice has spread to the other plant societies around us and has been very well received by designers. See our website for our complete show schedule: http://www.daffodilmn.org. You may plagiarize to your heart’s content!
Edie Godfrey
Minnesota
Looks like the snow is finally disappearing here as we’ve had gentle rain since midnight. The frost is starting to come out of the ground but our lakes still have ice covering them.