GROWING FOR SHOWS IS A WAY OF LIFE – WITH TOM PATTINSON

How frustrating the past year or so has been for many businesses, organisations, and gardeners. In a stop-go situation, garden centres and plant nurseries large and small have had to cope with the financial consequences, as home gardeners reached for the lifeline of mail order.

However, damage done, this industry which has remained buoyant for decades, will hopefully bounce back.

Of course, it’s frustrating that there’s a lingering element of essential regulation as we currently visit our favourite local gardens.

But conforming to requirements for social distancing, hand sanitising, oneway systems, pre-booking, etc is a small and necessary price to pay for our collective safety on the road to freedom.

Garden-oriented charitable organisations have also suffered financially from lockdown.

From the National Open Garden

Scheme (yellow book) to local villages, 2020 was not a good year. But that too is changing.

Get a list of gardens open

2021, from your local Tourist Information Office and book online.

I’ve certainly missed the spectacle of our local shows where the social offering is always as important as the dazzling displays. Hopefully, 2022 will bring a return of the contact and banter with fellow judges, exhibitors, and acquaintances.

Poor exhibitors, all charged up for competition and nowhere locally to compete. They certainly won’t stop producing top-quality vegetables, fruit and flowers in the face of a pandemic. Growing for show is a way of life for some.

The forthcoming Warkworth Virtual Exhibition can sate their appetite for competition and that of enthusiastic newcomers, just as it did last August.