2024 Flower Show

2024 Flower Show August 23 & 24, 2024 Piper Creek Trial Garden, Red Deer, Alberta

Our annual flower show was wonderful, as usual. It was beautiful weather under the three tents.  A ton of preparation and work was done by the volunteers, especially Mike Walliser, Herb Noyes, Clarence Swinimer, Shirley Cullum, Terri-Lynn and Ron Dodd, Debbie Hatt, and Marilyn & Lorne McArthur. We could not have done it without you.

The tents and tables were put up and arranged the day ahead so staging started early Friday morning.    Everyone was busy placing their exhibits and filling out the entry tags, scrambling sometimes to find the right name and classification number.  By 1:00 pm most of the exhibits were in place and Deb Hatt and Ken Jensen advised the judge and clerk instructions.  Mike Walliser chose the judging teams and Maxine bravely manned the head table by herself writing the names on the winners’ cards.  Terri-Lynn made sure the head table entries made it where they were supposed to be.

Reg Powys-Lybbe did a special glad spike judging class with a group of members who are on their way to be glad spike judges.  The public began to arrive at 4:00 pm and there were many oohs and aahs at the beautiful entries.

Special thanks to Shirley Cullum who organized the “Woodland” décor including the quilts along with her trusty crew, Terri-Lynn Dodd, Clarence Swinimer and Herb Noyes.  Thanks to everyone who donated the use of their quilts without question, trusting that they would be safe and come back clean and dry.

 Terri-Lynn and Shirley had kept some dahlias, glads and foliage aside for sales of bouquets on Friday and Saturday and then at 4:00 on Saturday we started to pull flowers from the exhibition tables.  The public were able to choose from pre-made bouquets or could select their own flowers for a bouquet. Thanks to Marilyn McArthur who donated four pails of glads for the sale.

Thanks to Cathy Fielden for the tasty lunch (for the judges, exhibitors and helpers) and Ron Dodd who provided the porta-potty.  Clarence Swinimer has been such a big help all during the season, even though he is not a member of the club, so the club gave him a gift card to a local restaurant.  The volunteer scribes and other helpers received Tim Horton gift cards.On Saturday we were kept busy mingling with the public and answering questions.  Normally we have a quick meeting to discuss what we could do better but it was Deb Hatt’s birthday so we all had cake and ice cream instead! When it was time to pack up we had extra volunteers and everything was done in an hour!