WOKINGHAM Horticultural Association’s (WHA) fourth and final Mini Garden Show on September 27, was blessed with a dry, but gusty, day.
The show attracted an amazing 50 entries, exhibited at the ‘Garden Room’ on Ormonde Road allotments.
Paul Jarvis’s three Grenadier Pastelle dahlias, entered in the class ‘WOW, I grew that’, took first prize and were awarded Best in Show while fellow allotment tenant Terry Miller took second with his giant pumpkin weighing in at 21kg.
Potatoes, grown and harvested by nine-year-old Josh Frewin were awarded third prize by the judge.
Emma Choules took first prize in a class where all five home-grown flowers/fruit/vegetables needed to show the colour red in whole or in part.
The mini plum tomatoes she entered as part of this class were awarded Best Tomatoes in Show.
The 10 colourful entries in the flower arranging class were all delightful and Doreen Hogston’s basket of flowers and vegetables suitable for a table decoration at a harvest supper won first prize.
The largest class, with 15 entries, was Specimen Flower in Own Container.
Sisters Jessica Lambert (8) and Charlotte (3) were both commended on the pretty flowers they had grown, while Gerald Cooper’s red dahlia won first prize with Mayoress Claire Lack’s rose in second place. Gerald won another first with his apples and pears in the fruit section.
Town Mayor Cllr Tony Lack and Mayoress Claire Lack had both entered classes in the morning and returned in the afternoon in their official capacities to draw the raffle that had been running throughout September.
The Mayor was also delighted to present the Royal Horticultural Banksian Medal and Certificate to Sheila McKeand for her ‘most creative ideas during the 2020 Coronavirus lockdown’ and ‘going the extra mile’.
Not only did she work with the WHA webmasters, Rach and Nick, to create what we believe was the first online virtual show during April, but also organised Sow a Seed kits for families receiving food parcels from the Wokingham Hub.
This project for the community led on to developing the Garden Room at the Ormonde Road allotment site with funding from the Town Council and Tesco. WHA is grateful to Tesco Community Champion, Louise Jedras, for her help and support with these projects and our shows.
The WHA is planning a series of sweet pea workshops to be run by Terry Miller in October and there will be a Pumpkin Festival later in the month – covid regulations permitting.
For more information on the WHA please see the website www.w-h-a.org.uk
Pauline MacBrayne
