A wide variety of roses on display at Peachland show

The banquet room at the Peachland Community Centre was filled with colour and fragrance during the Peachland Sowers and Growers’ Eighth Annual Rose Show and Tea Saturday.

Despite the challenges of a hot dry spell earlier in the season followed by storms just before the show, home gardeners from Peachland to Kelowna submitted 150 entries including hybrid teas, floribundas, miniature and David Austin roses .

While there are other flower shows, Peachland has the only rose show in the Okanagan, said Phyllis Papineau, one of the event organizers.

Danielle Scott, one of the two rose show judges, talked about what makes an award-winning rose.

Scott said judges look for flowers displaying a conical high centre, good foliage, colour as well as balance and proportion in the display.

Scott and her husband Malcolm had judged the rose show for a number of years; however, Alicja Paradzik, a rosarian and master gardener, stepped in to judge this year after Malcolm died in January.

The Malcolm Scott Memorial category for three different miniature roses in a single vase was introduced this year.

Scott got hooked on roses when she and her husband got free tickets to a rose show in Vancouver.

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “All these different kinds of roses. We started buying them and growing them.”

Roses are a huge hobby, she said. People can grow them, exhibit them in shows, photograph them, hybridize them and arrange them.

As for why roses are so popular, Scott said colour and fragrance are factors and noted roses are actually hard to hurt, pointing to the landscape roses that bloom in boulevards where one would think nothing would grow.

“The bang for the buck, the amount of blooms you have is just astounding,” she said.

Almost as fascinating was the eclectic collection of vases exhibitors brought to display their entries.

Part of the banquet room was converted into a tea room so visitors could stop for a spot of tea, sandwiches and homemade sweets at charming tables set with fine china and enjoy the sweet fragrance of the roses.