Botanical brilliance on display at summer horticultural show
A smiling May Crawford took first place with her colourful wicker basket of blooms at the Arran Horticultural Society summer show held in the Lamlash Community Theatre. The keen Brodick gardener was just one of the winners at a splendid show.
Green-fingered gardeners had a chance to display their carefully nurtured buds and blooms at the well-attended summer horticultural show which took place at the Lamlash community theatre last Wednesday.
Filling the theatre with the sweet, delicate scents of flowers in full bloom, the lines of tables were bowing under the weight of rows of roses, gladioli, lilies and a huge assortment of colourful flowers.
Sharing the hall with the flowers and floral arrangements, an array of fruit and vegetables was also on display, most of them prime specimens with many belonging to John O’Sullivan, who took the bulk of the trophies and first place prizes for his vegetable entries.
Displaying enormously long carrots, parsnips, green beans, leeks and potatoes, John also entered his impressive first attempt at growing a new vegetable for the first time: long beetroot.
The show, which is one of two held during the year by the Arran Horiticultrual Society, one in spring and one in summer, has grown to include various other crafts ranging from jams, preserves and breads to knitted items and even photography.
Cleaning up in the crochet section and earning herself the Chris Hall Rose Bowl, Nancy Bremner took nine first prizes from her 10 entries in the category. Another prolific exhibitor, but this time in the baking category, John Baraclough took the F C Henderson Trophy for winning the most points in the section along with the J F Turton Trophy for his first place winning photograph of a coastal skiff in the photography section.
The exhibition, which spills out of the theatre and into the corridor outside where the hanging baskets were displayed, also extended to the school cafeteria, where the children’s section and baking entries were housed and where the prize-giving took place.
At the end of the show, trophies were awarded to the prize-winners, who received them from Ellie Jones, Colin Totty and society chairman John Sillars. John said: ‘We are immensely appreciative of the huge amount of quality entrants in this year’s show.
‘We are particularly pleased with the horticultural entries whose standards remained impressively high despite the vagaries of the weather this year.
‘Congratulations to all of the prize, trophy and category winners and, as usual, thank you to everyone who visited and enjoyed all of the items on display.’