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The GFGS Stand at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2017

On Tuesday 9th May 2017, I travelled across to the Three Counties Showground with Tom Price to start putting together the GFGS Stand for the RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2017.

Having arrived and located our space in the National Plant Societies Area we assembled our hardware ready for the plants the following day, a couple of hours well spent in our opinion.

At about 12 midday on Wednesday 10th May, Tom Price, Stuart Rowe and Alan Cursue arrived at my house having collected plants on route and after some lunch we travelled in convoy to Malvern with baskets of plants to finish staging the display. Baskets and/or plants had been provided by the following gardening clubs or societies.

AGS Cotswold & Malvern Alpine Group (trough & alpine garden provided by Eric Jarrett & Pauline Carless)
Black Pear Gardening Club (basket provided by Brian Skeys)
Cheltenham & District Allotment Holders Association (2 troughs provided by Colin & Rosemary Smith)
Cheltenham & District Orchid Society (lots of baskets & plants provided by Tom Price)
Cheltenham Horticultural Society (basket provided by David Richards)
Churchdown Horticultural Society (basket provided by Rebecca Henwood)
Churchdown Village Junior School (2 baskets provided by students from the school gardening club)
Cotswold Fuchsia & Pelargonium Society (2 baskets provided by Robert Champion)
Hucclecote Horticultural Society (basket provided by Jan Broadway & Alan Cursue)
Slimbridge Horticultural Society (basket provided by Carole Jeffes)
Thornbury Horticultural Society (basket provided by Dot Culverhouse)

All the baskets, plants etc., were arranged and lists with the names of the Clubs that had supplied them along with a booklet from Churchdown Village Junior School outlining a year in the life of their garden. The display was finished off with our display boards and some GFGS promotional leaflets, posters and Club literature that I had been supplied with.

Along with my long suffering wife, I arrived bright and early on Thursday 11th May just to make sure everything was okay!

During the show the stand was stewarded by a number of members from local clubs and societies who were kept busy answering questions from people visiting the show.

On Sunday 14th May Alan Cursue, Jan Broadway, Stuart & Val Rowe who came for the day also stayed on to help us pack up and assist with the transportation of plants for which I’m most grateful. We were lucky to have the loan of Tom Prices handy new cart and Stuart had the forethought to bring a wheel barrow both of which allowed us to transport all plants, props etc., out to our vehicles and once again we were driving out of the car park at about 5 pm!.

My thanks to all those who supplied baskets, plants etc., and stewarded the stand, without their help and hard work we would not have produced a stand which was admired by many attending the show.

A special thanks to those mentioned above who had made the baskets up on behalf of their clubs/societies. We also potentially gained a few new members for Affiliated Societies and had a number of enquiries about grants for school gardening clubs and the Federation.

Rod Wells

You can also see pictures from earlier shows: