So 48 hours beforehand I looked up the entry classes and mooched around the garden and the house and decide to enter the Hellebores, the Orchids and the Succulents classes for a bit of variety and on the grounds that perhaps one of those might have less competition.
I left the orchid and succulent in their home pots ("you're not going to show that tatty old thing are you? " said my son), identified which hellebore blooms I would float in a bowl (" a bowl is a receptacle which is wider than its height" said the regulations) and went on the internet to see how to maximise my chances of a prize.
The internet was surprisingly unhelpful which is why I thought perhaps you all might be interested in the nitty gritty and I would be most interested to hear your experiences of entering local flower shows.
Anyway I did discover that show Hellebore blooms must be of the non-fertilised type with intact pollen heads, and that the succulent in question was a native of Chesil Beach in Dorset and that my specimen showed both the mature spindly branches and the younger stoloniferous stems, which I duly wrote out on the label together with its latin name, thinking I might at least get points for the label. I also discovered the correct name for my hybrid orchid.
Anyway to cut a longish story short, the succulent in its ancient pot, a home hand painted 50p terracotta clay thing, won a prize!
I was very surprised indeed and very pleased till I realised that winning a prize meant one had to stay till the bitter end to watch the prize giving and listen to the speeches.
Now the Hellebore section was well filled with the most stunning blooms and the exhibit which won first prize well deserved it: five floating blooms all of one variety all perfect and of the same size and exquisite colouring in a white pyrex dish.
I had chosen to exhibit five different blooms. The trouble was, when I went round the show someone had sabotaged my hellebore blooms! Two of my flowers had been substituted. One of them for a rather faded fertilised flower which I knew wasn't mine, and one for a variety which I do not have in my garden. I recognised it in one of the other bowls.
Additionally in the Camellia section (which I didn't enter) the best exhibit (as I thought) didn't get a prize and first prize went to a committee member's wife.
Huh! I think it very funny, and immediately cast my mind to the last episode of 'Rosemary and Thyme' which I watched, which involved flower judging and murder.
The nice thing about these shows is that one is able to see what grows well locally and also able to admire at close quarters and at leisure, flowers and plants which are very beautiful and deserve to be admired properly rather than a cursory glance at a distance when passing the flower bed.
One also meets the local worthies, most of whom are very nice and knowledgeable and clearly good gardeners.
However there is this undercurrent, which is probably inevitable in any competition with serious silverware at stake, which is very human, of sabotage and nepotism. Arguably sabotage and nepotism are all part of the human game and it little matters in something as unimportant in the grand scheme of things as a local horticultural show and can be very funny, like watching other people's car park wars on the school run. But I did feel a bit sad someone had nicked my Hellebore blooms. Not that I hadn't won a prize with them but that someone had been worried enough to spoil my entry.