AGS/SRGC Hexham Show

[Maggi Young]

Visit historic Hexham on Saturday 31st March: you could win a Farrer Medal, enjoy the show and spend lots at the plant stalls.

[galanthophile]

I shall be there and it'll be my birthday!

[TC]

The Hexham show is a worth while excuse to visit Northumberland. Being only 147 miles from Ayr, it's a mere doddle there and back.
Apart from being a great show, you can try delicacies such as "singing hinnies" and visit Mrs. Miggins tea rooms, (of Blackadder fame ) for a slice of Pecan Pie - if I have left any.  Listening to the Geordie accent and banter at the open air market is also most entertaining.

[Anthony Darby]

I don't think Edmund would have been eating pecan pie in Mrs Miggins pie shop, somehow? Perhaps Herring and fruit pie (http://www.seatofmars.com/herringandfruitpie.htm)?

[Maggi Young]

Mmmmm? Herring and fruit pie? Reminds me of my chum Lorna's surprising new soup: Rhubarb and potato :
It was thoroughly disgusting. She;s a woman witha lot in common with Baldrick .

[SueG]

The Hexham show is a worth while excuse to visit Northumberland.

Who needs an excuse!! - well behaved visitors are always welcome and there are lots of good tea shops with scrummy cakes to maintain body and soul during the long afternoon of the show!

Sue

[Maggi Young]

Well, I hope the Hexham show went well today... I have heard nothing as yet.... anybody out there with tales, pix??

[TC]

Just got back to Ayr from the Hexham show.  The weather was spring like and the carpark was full !
Lots of entries with the Primula and Trilliums well in evidence  While looking at the plant sales, I got a shock to see a double Hepatica on sale at £205.00 - yes, the decimal place is in the right position !
I have posted three pictures of plants that took my fancy, I don't even know if they were class winners, but I liked them.  Just in case the names were no attached, they are Dionysia Monika, Iris Pumilia ( all of 12cms high) and Pleione Ducat....actually P. forrestii    M
Tom

[Anthony Darby]

OOoo I like that Iris Tom.

[Maggi Young]

Hello, Tom, glad you are safely home, thanks for the pix. That Iris is a little cracker, isn't it? Very dramatic colouring... I see from the label, just, that it appears to have been grown from Archibald seed (J&JA). Quite unusual to see that strong colour combo: yummy!

[Joakim B]

The iris !!!! it is like the inverse of the Swedish flagg. Yellow fields with a blue cross.
Stunning but I would like to have all three plants so TC knew how to pick beuties.
Please more if You have.
Thanks from Joakim

[Lesley Cox]

It is certainly a real stunner, the iris, and shows that it's a good idea to grow seed of a single species, from many different sources. If I'd seen it in a seed list just as Iris pumila, I probably wouldn't have bothered, having a few different forms already, but nothing at all this this one.

The others are superb too, especially the Dionysia which seems to be a very fine hybrid, it turns up so often looking utterly perfect, but I wonder why I'm reminded of that picture which Darren Sleep showed on the old Forum, of a bright yellow fungus which appeared overnight on his rock garden?

[TC]

From a brilliantly sunny day in Ayr, hello.  I can now almost believe Spring is on its way.
For the lovers of this classy Iris, here is another picture I have enlarged from an original.  I did not bother taking many pictures as, to be honest, many of the plants are entered year after year.  Although they look beautiful, and a bit larger, I already have them all from past years.  I now look at things that can make a good picture, allowing for the constraints of the lighting conditions and positioning on the benches.  If I was given a free hand at the plants I could take much better photographs but now I just take these as record shots of what I like.

[galanthophile]

It was an excellent show - some very fine plants. I took loads of photos. Too many to share, but this is the erythronium, Erythronium multiscapoideum that won the Farrer medal for best in show. Some gorgeous trilliums, asarum, narcissi, primula and fritillaria caught my eye but I didn't buy anything from the trade stands! Too expensive for what I wanted.

[Anthony Darby]

Must get that iris!