Gardening Scotland Show
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AS THE shortest day approaches, we can start to think ahead to the 2009 gardening season. This week, I will be attending a meeting concerned with the Gardening Scotland show, to be held once again at the Royal Highland Showground, near Edinburgh, on May 29-31.
This will be our 10th show – an occasion for mild celebration, surely?
Christmas thought: still thinking about gifts? How about tickets for the show, with prices held at the same as last year? Interested? Either phone 0131 333 0965 during normal office hours, or see gardeningscotland.com
Since the 2008 show, the directors have been working very hard to ensure the future of the show, taking account of elements way beyond their control.
We are included in the annual calendar of shows and other horticultural events held across the entire UK, and this is crucial, not only to show organisers and their customers but also to the exhibitors, because you can’t have one without the other.
Let me give you an example of where I am heading. Two years ago, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) decided to extend Chelsea Flower Show by one more day (usually Tuesday to Friday) by taking it into Saturday.
There was one very obvious reason for extending from four days to five, and that was health and safety. To explain: although the show was to run for an extra day, the total number of tickets made available over five days would remain the same as for four days – in other words, there were significant health-and-safety fears regarding overcrowding.
As a consequence, the extra day trading was obviously welcomed by many, but this move had serious implications for some exhibitors.
Firstly, those who show cut plant material had to substantially restock their stands by about Thursday night because the foliage and flowers could not stay in pristine condition over the entire length of time considering the high temperatures and dry atmosphere in the marquees.
More importantly for Gardening Scotland, about two dozen of our regular exhibitors who come to us from Chelsea had one less day to get home, deal with the business that had piled up while they were in London, pack some fresh clothes, load up with fresh stock and make their way to Ingliston to be ready for Gardening Scotland opening on the following Friday.
In fact, they did it and we are extremely grateful to them – but what comes a week later in this very special calendar?
The answer: Gardeners’ World Live (GWL) in the Birmingham Exhibition Centre, and imagine our consternation when the organisers of that event (not the RHS) made it known that they wanted to start their show a day earlier.
Our early-warning system, in the form of the exhibitors association, informed us that this might just be the straw to break the camel’s back. Coupled with the pressure caused by the Chelsea change, this new threat might cause many of our southern exhibitors to choose not to come to Scotland because it would be too much of a squeeze.
You might reasonably ask the question: how did we get ourselves sandwiched between two giants in the first place? For the record, Gardening Scotland slots in after the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and that is not surprising because, as many of you will recall, our dates were originally chosen by the RHS for its Strathclyde Park Show.
The RHS ran it for three years and then walked away for reasons that have never been made adequately clear to its Scottish supporters. That is when Gardening Scotland was born, and we had to keep the same dates because the exhibitors have these dates in their diaries from one year to the next – we are part of that annual calendar of events.
I am conscious that I have taken rather longer than I intended to explain all that, but the reason is that the organisers of GWL have just decided that their dates will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Phew! That’s a relief.
This is the result of some pretty intensive lobbying by the exhibitors, the RHS and us. What’s more, Gardening Scotland has made it known to the exhibitors that it will be offering three special prizes, each valued at £500, as incentives for them to continue their support of the show.
This may not seem a lot, but it has been shown elsewhere that it helps improve the standard of exhibits – and that benefits everyone. All of that is an indication once again that the directors of Gardening Scotland are determined to maintain the very high standards that were set out at the beginning.
I hope that many of you will help us to celebrate our 10th birthday by coming to the show. I look forward to seeing you there.
Leaf fall
I am not going to be on about collecting leaves, but about house plants.
To digress, many of you ask about summer leaf fall from hollies. These plants are evergreen, so why do they shed their leaves? Well, it’s a sad story because it’s happening to me – I’m shedding my hair, but on an all-year-round pattern, because I’m gettin’ aul’! The leaves of evergreens get old, too, and when they do – ceasing to be of much use – they are shed by the plant.
Let’s now think about one of our favourite evergreen house plants, the weeping fig (Ficus benjamina), a relative of the rubber plant (Ficus elastica). These plants tend to lose older leaves in the winter months, but the process is often hastened by a number of external conditions.
Firstly, as for all house plants, growth slows down in the short days and generally lower temperatures – so they need less water. Plants lose leaves if they are over-watered.
Secondly, temperatures may be lower, especially at night when the central heating goes off. The likes of weeping fig need a minimum temperature of 55F (13C), and when I say minimum temperature, it means throughout the 24-hour cycle.
Thirdly, the problem is further exacerbated by low light levels.
The first point above refers to all plants, but the other two will vary depending on the species – suffice to say that if some of your plants are not doing so well, having satisfied yourself that watering is not the problem, try moving them to different locations where light and heat may be different.
A winner for 2009
I always try to finish on a brighter note, and you can’t get much brighter – perhaps stunning would be a better word – than the new Rudbeckia coming from the Thompson & Morgan stable this year.
We have had some belters in the past, including “Cherokee Sunset”, “Toto” and “Prairie Sun”, but I reckon “Cherry Brandy” will be the best yet. All are derived from Rudbeckia hirta and, as such, are grown from seed each year. Sow early and have flowers by July. The plants stand up to a wide range of weather conditions and will flower through until October.
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