Ashton Hayes and Tarvin Flower Club's January Meeting

Our first meeting of the new year proved to be quite different from the norm and very interesting.

Sharon Nolan our club President is an area demonstrator and had decided that she needed a new demonstration of 6 designs to add to her repertoire.This is quite a task as it needs to show variation in type of design, some traditional, some modern, some quickly assembled and a variety of container. She also needed different types and colours of flowers and foliage. The demonstration also needs to be able to be adapted to suit a variety of hall and meeting place as well as situations where flowers may not be available.

Because of all these constraints Sharon decided it would be a good idea to have a trial run amongst people she knows. Her title was Paint it Black, from the Rolling Stones in 1966. Each design had a relevant clip of music but Sharon hadn't finalised this part yet.

Her 1st design was placed on a replica door, as mentioned in the lyrics of the song and was a very striking design. Some designs were tributes to people she admired, Nelson Mandela, Marie Curie and Leonard Cohen. She also included "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and a design in a barbecue. (depicting black charcoal and often black food! )

The results were very good with flowers that varied in colour, type and form. We saw orchids (good value at the moment ), small sunflowers, leucodendrum and other exotic South African plants, antirrhinums, red and orange roses, terracotta lilies, multi- coloured gerbera and gypsophila along with decorative cabbages, various berries and yellow peppers.

Sharon explained how her ideas had been formed and I hope we were useful to her in the feed-back we provided.

Sharon's arrangements could be divided into separate sections and, therefore, from the 6 designs there were 12 raffle prizes -- always popular with flower clubs.