Page 53 - Simply Veg Issue 3 2019

out, but I’ve held off due to the frost forecast – in May! Coloured caulis and various kales are trotting on, coloured beetroot and carrots have just gone in. And I’m experimenting with shallow terracotta round dishes of coloured leaves.
The North Yorkshire/South Durham DA put on a great display at the Harrogate Spring Show. It was still quite early for veg but they managed a good variety of produce and plants. There was plenty of educational information and guidance, helping them to win Best in Show for “An Exhibit of Special Educational and or Scientific Interest” and a Premier Gold. Congratulations to the team involved. (see separate report-ed)
Look who else I bumped into at Harrogate Spring Show – our Northern Branch Sub- Editor, David Allison; who was judging. I’d earlier seen the legendary Jim Buttress who
said hello - can’t believe he remembered me from Southport Show last year. Always good to see familiar faces, particularly when you’ve a bit of a problem. Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll leave it there.
And another familiar face to many NVS Members – Michael Osborn – at the Alpine Garden Society Annual Show in Whitworth. Here he is pictured with some of his beautiful prize winners. He’s been doing very well at the shows with his alpines. The Show is well worth a visit – a riot of colour and smells
of miniscule and not so miniscule floral displays.
Don’t forget our Facebook page https:// www.facebook.com/NVSLancs/ for updates and goings on.
Cath Holmes,
Lancashire DA Secretary
Michael Osborn with his Alpines
North Yorkshire and South Durham DA Report
For the North Yorkshire and South Durham DA the first months of the New Year are hectic, we spend the time developing our stand at the Harrogate Spring flower as well as getting our years presenters on board, February saw Geoff Wilson peering into the root zone, March gave us Chris Snell looking at the Potato industry in Yorkshire, and after a busy day erecting the stall at Harrogate we hotfooted it back to Teesside to see the presentation by Fiona Shenfield and Ian Simpson, who gave a great presentation on Legumes.
The next day back to Harrogate to see the results of judging of the stands, and we achieved a Premier Gold and best in show for the Society stands. Excellent work by the
team and particularly the designer Adrian Read and the provider of display vegetables Kevin Trischler. This year’s stand was a change from previous years stands, in that the focus was more on education rather than just a fantastic display of vegetables, we never buy in plants like most of the other stands at Harrogate, but ours are grown by the membership particularly Kevin. For the past two years we have achieved a Gold award and the adjudicators had explained that although the stand was spectacular
in display, we were failing to follow the specification laid down by the Harrogate flower show for the educational class.
As our target was to achieve a ‘Premier’ Gold, we needed to re-hash the complete
stand, which meant that we wouldn’t need lots of vegetables. The DA in its quest to achieve the specification developed a set of educational boards for the stand, and the plan is to develop these further, we can’t
sit on our laurels, and our future stand will resolve some minor issues that we had whilst constructing the stand. The Premier Gold was attained and the ‘Best in show’ was a very welcome bonus. This is Adrian’s 37th Gold award for his stand design, and I for one will not question his design in future! Geoff Wilson, DA Secretary.
Winning NVS Educational and Scientific display at Harrogate Spring show
Geoff holding the “Best in Show” award at the Harrogate Spring Show
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