Judging/Staging Beautiful Collections

It is so encouraging to see the positive discussion of staging issues, going beyond the fairly cut-and-dried technicalities of judging collections. However, I think we tend to limit our imaginations and indeed our capacity to achieve more beautiful collections if we think of “staging’ as referring simply to the placement (i.e. positioning) of blooms in a collection, the type of properties in which they are mounted, how neatly the blooms are lined up and how neatly the mounting material e.g. boxwood is clipped in each tube or bottle. All but one of these factors are basically technical or mechanical. Although the neatness factors do contribute to the overall beauty of a collection, the one that calls on artistry is the placement of blooms. That is very important, and well-executed placement can in fact distinguish one collection from others made up of similar flowers. There is another factor that goes beyond that however, and in my opinion (and that of my wife, Lina, who has the artist’s eye in our team) is at least as important, and that is the selection of the blooms that compose the collection. The word “compose” is chosen quite deliberately because it implies that a collection is indeed a composition , a picture. In my opinion, one way to further challenge our artistry, expand our palettes, and generally enhance the beauty of our collections would be to allot points for, or to require, more diversity in collections. (Throckmorton collections, in my opinion, tend to be more beautiful because a good deal of diversity is already required.) For example, I would suggest adding points, or require, that a Quinn collection include at least 8 stems from divisions other than 1,2, and 3. (At this point, I’m just guessing. Eight may be too few.) Conversely, the number of stems from any one division could be limited. One could also consider increasing the number of divisions requiring representation to, say, 6. Another approach, not exclusive, might be to limit the number of duplicated division/color codes; e.g. allow no more than two pairs of, say, 2 Y-Y’s or 1 W-W’s or 9 W-GYR’s. One could also consider adding a minimum division requirement to the Throckmorton, or limiting the number of stems from any one division. Even collections of 5 could be made more interesting and beautiful. For example, some shows already require a certain minimum number of divisions in all-yellow collections. Other shows state something like “diversity of divisions is desirable” but they don’t allot points, so this never becomes a factor. This would all require lots more thought and maybe experimentation. My top of the head feeling right now is that adding points might be better than adding requirements. Adding points may lend more flexibility, and make the competition more interesting, whereas adding requirements may tend to be stifling. In some seasons, for example, we might have a flock of Div 6’s, or 9’s and not much else. I know there are some exhibitors who like the challenge of showing, for example, a Throckmorton collection made up of flowers from one division. While I’m not keen on that myself, I have to admit that sort of tour de force can be interesting at times. This may not be a problem for the reason that the existing Throckmorton requirements may reasonably be considered to already provide sufficient diversity and room for artistry. Or, an exception could be made for one-division Throckmorton collections.