Julian is a small village in the mountains of Southern California near the city of San Diego. It was famous for two things, its lilacs and its apple pie, the climate being ideal for producing the winter chill that lilacs and apples require. it is also an ideal climate for Daffodils. For the past eleven years the town has put together an annual spring Daffodil Show. It is now a town festival and brings in many visitors to enjoy the flowers before enjoying the apple pie. The show is held in the village Town Hall. It is not an ADS accredited show, nevertheless, it has some aspects that would be the envy of many of the accredited shows. The rules for entries are fairly simple. Any daffodil is accepted and it does not need to be named. You put your entries into the most appropriate divisions and if entries are incorrectly placed it does not matter, for the judges will move it to the proper division while they are judging. Judges are generous with their ribbons, after all, the point is to encourage people to grow daffodils. This year there was a mix of ADS judges as well as judges from other flower organizations.
There was an enormous youth section with 53 exhibitors, enough that the youth section could be broken into age groups starting with 3-5 years and ending with older teenagers.
Small part of the youth section at the show.
The adult section was equally impressive with 62 exhibitors. In total, for both the youth and adult section there were 962 stems in about 727 entries. And this was a bad climate year. Last year they had twice as many flowers. How many accredited shows can boast those numbers of either stems or exhibitors? There were three stem entries, too and even some collections of 6 or 9 stems.
We found a number of Ice Follies and put them together to compete for the “Tom Stettner Special Award.” Just kidding :-)
Best flower was a good ‘Salome’ exhibited by Gretchen Brown and the runner up was a lovely unknown identified as coming from Scamp. It was shown by K.Wright.
The show was started by Sally Snipes and Jay Pengra, and as a fun weekend, not to be a serious show. I was really impressed by the enthusiasm of the helpers who organized and set up this year’s show. They all seemed be be having a lot of fun. It really contrasts with the somewhat blase attitudes that I see in most of the serious accredited shows.
I really think it will be shows like this that will keep daffodil interest alive. I really think we need to encourage kids and their parents to show and grow daffodils and get them interested in showing. Once they are introduced to the hobby entice the better show quality by displaying the possibilities. I am impressed by credited shows but they are a bit intimidating to the lay daffodil grower. I just back from Murphy’s where we had no youth blooms and very few small growers. Murphy’s was only my 2nd show to display my blooms. I had a great time and do not feel intimidated showing against Spotts and Fong. But you have to set your sights high to be at their level. I’d love to be at a show to encourage kids to show there flowers even if all they have is Ice Follies. How were these kids introduced? I’ve always thought getting school classes to plant bulbs in fall to show in spring would be a lot of fun. I’d be interested on how Sally and Jay pulled it off. The future of the ADS is in our youth.
You need to find a school that would be interested, someone to donate bulbs preferably something like Ice Follies that is hard to kill, and offer ice cream sundaes to all the kids that enter flowers the next year.
Harold