Aberdeen & County Floral Group is extremely proud of Johan White and Fiona Davies for achieving a Gold Award at Gardening Scotland 2012, and extend to them our heartiest congratulations on achieving such a prestigious accolade. In their own words, they tell us about their experience.
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It seems like a very long time since the December meeting when Ann (A&CFG President) handed us a list of titles for Gardening Scotland and said “choose one you would like to do” and added “let me know by the end of tonight”. The overall title for the show was “Hooray for Hollywood” and the list contained about thirty film titles. We scanned down the list and as soon as we saw Psycho we knew that it would be our choice. By the end of the evening we had come up with a shortlist of three titles; “Psycho”, “White Christmas” and “Brigadoon”, forgetting all about it until the end of January when we received a text from Ann which said “We got Psycho”! We got together and mulled over a few ideas, then decided to leave it until after the Spring Show at Duthie Park, and before we knew it we were into April.
When you ask anybody what they most remember about the film “Psycho”, ninety nine per cent will say the “shower scene”, and it was this scene which we always had in mind. Our first task was to work out the mechanics - could our ideas be translated into reality? With the aid of a hula-hoop and some assorted stands we designed our “shower”. We passed a sketch to Ann who took it to a friend with the intention of reporting back to us re whether it could be fabricated and the estimated cost; it came as a surprise to us all when he called the next day to “come and see the stand” which was now ready.
The stand was exactly what we wanted; now down to the serious business of the flowers. We met on a weekly basis throughout May. At our first meeting we had a brilliant idea regarding blood swirling down the drain, but our attempt to put this into practice ended up looking like a badly thrown together pizza, so it was back to the drawing board! Over the next few weeks, with an assortment of garden plant material and bunches of supermarket flowers, we developed and refined our ideas. Then towards the end of May, flowers were ordered, pearls strung onto fishing line and test tubes polished.
At lunch-time on Wednesday 30th May, we loaded up the car muttering “we’ll never get it all in”. However, everything fitted and we set off for Edinburgh. On arrival at Ingliston we unpacked, topped up the water in the flower buckets and set up the stand, fitted the organza shower curtains, complete with the pearls on fishing line, and hung the floral curtain at the back of the shower in preparation for the next day, leaving around 9 pm to get something to eat. Thursday dawned, pouring with rain and we were back at Ingliston at 8 am. We had to be finished the arrangement and cleared up by 2.30 pm. The hours just flew past and even including a dash to Morrison’s, for some red carnations, we managed to finish in the allotted time, then it was back to Edinburgh to relax for the evening.
On Friday morning, we arrived at the Show and our first stop was the SAFAS area to see how we had been judged. We both had our fingers crossed that we would receive some favourable comments, but neither of us anticipated the Gold Certificate that was awarded to our exhibit. Needless to say we were delighted and a lot of whooping and hugging followed!
Working on the arrangement from our initial ideas through to the completed design was great fun. As with any project there were ups and downs along the way, but all in all it was a fantastic experience. We would like to thank all the Committee and Club Members for their support, and Ann for dismantling the arrangement after the Show finished on the Sunday. The Aberdeen & County Floral Group has many talented members and we hope that seeing what we achieved will encourage more members to come forward to represent the Club at either the bi-annual Area Show or at Gardening Scotland.
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Johan & Fiona are very keen and talented flower arrangers who have competed locally and are Committee Members of Aberdeen & County Floral Group.
Following their success at Ingliston, Johan & Fiona have been invited to represent SAFAS at the next National Show in Bournemouth.
The images below illustrate the creation of the successful exhibit.
