Somehow I knew that Southport Flower Show was the right place to take a first, tentative dip into the murky waters of floral marquee exhibiting. And so it proved to be. With around 80,000 visitors the show is not much smaller than Tatton and the quality of exhibitors is high – many are veterans of the Chelsea/Hampton/Tatton circuit. But the place has a cheery, entertaining buzz about it. It feels like a cross between a horticultural show and a county fair, with show gardens and a big Grand Marquee, but also an arena, complete with jousting knights, sheepdog displays, falconry and clowns.

So Southport was where I chose to dip my horticultural toe and I duly won my first floral marquee silver medal. The show is reassuringly firmly judged, it seems. A couple of old hands peered at my medal, raised their eyebrows and said, in effect, ‘well, you’re a first timer. You’ll do better here when they are used to seeing your display’. Which was interesting. I think they were just being encouraging, looking with hindsight at my rather gappy effort. It’s taken me 5 years to get the measure of show garden judging and now I’m starting from scratch again in the marquee. So far I’ve gathered that plant size and quality is almost everything, whether you cut a stem and arrange it in a vase, or place plants in a mock garden display. Gaps are most assuredly frowned upon. Ideally the display should fill the stand from top to bottom in a seamless ripple of colour, and the more colours the better, at Southport, it seems. My restrained palette of purples, pinks and blues looked decidedly dowdy against the giant, neon-pink begonias opposite me and the eye-wateringly bright cut gladioli nearby, both of which won a coveted Large Gold medal.

I like the culture of the floral marquee – many of the people have clearly known one another for years, touring the country through the season in overlapping zigzags. Some meet up almost every week, others just once a year. It has something of the sense of an extended family in a travelling fair. There is plenty of banter, and lending and borrowing is the norm, but you are left alone to get the job done – time and focus is precious. I felt welcomed, encouraged even. The marquee is also fantastically egalitarian. A lone woman lugged in 20 trees and a pile of boulders and single-handedly built a display of acers with a mossy stream through it in three days. Right opposite her, four beefy Geordies who would not look out of place in a shipyard carried in racks of cut chrysanthemums, their soft hands gently easing every incurved bloom into a pristine display of perfect domes.

I learned much – but the main lesson was that the marquee is where I belong – with thanks to Jim Hillier for the gentle nudge. There’s no question that I got the same PR value as building a show garden, plus a valuable opportunity to sell plants. It’s still very hard work, but takes so much less time than building a show garden. In here I can focus on the plants alone. Which is good. Very good.

Anyway, it’s all over now and back to the garden to smarten it up before our final NGS day of the year on Bank Holiday Monday. The plum crop is ripe and the damsons will be in a day or two. The orchard is reddening beautifully – the apple trees are laden with a crop so heavy that a couple of branches have broken under the weight. Soon we will be overwhelmed with produce to store, preserve, sell or give away. It’s a nice problem to have.

August 24, 2011