here today to talk about the upcoming flower show so i think i'll begin by letting people know the date so they can write it down and keep trying to remember it while we're talking then we'll show it again but  flower show is june eleventh from two to four and june twelfth from ten to two correct that's right ok and it's at the st joseph's parish center that's right ok and that's at one thirty common street  belmont yes and is this a fundraiser because it didn't it's a donations welcome it is not a fund raiser we do it for educational purposes and for experience for our members we want to give them  chance to hone their skills in a competition show competition but it's also for education so that they can learn from each other and in the heart a culture of division see different plants and plant specimens that they might not be familiar with but we also want to educate the public about what floral design is and to introduce them to the wide range of horticulture not just your most common things so it primary purpose is is educational it does cost us money to put it on which is why we say if people want to donate they can but it is there is no admission charge and please or welcome we just say no strollers but other than that  it's a family friendly event that doesn't cost you anything great it sounds fun now this is the garden clubs eightieth anniversary it is and can you tell me a little bit  i've only been a member about ten years i waited till my children were all out of the house and then i decided to jump in but at length can tell you more because she's she's a long i've been a member probably about twenty five years so i started a very long time ago even when my daughter was little because i just was so interested in floral design and her culture and do you have a background in floral design you know before you became involved with this did you study anything and know this it was just something that i was very interested in and wanted to pursue and i felt the garden club was the best way to do it and you have to be a belmont resident to be town you can still be a member but you initially have to be in town and if someone wanted to become a member what are the you know what's a prerequisite to become a member you need to be sponsored by two  members it's not as arduous this it sounds it's a very simple form you fill out just saying what your interest is in and if you don't happen to know people in the garden club our membership person will  meet you and introduce you to people and so it's not it's really not difficult to get sponsors that's not a barrier to joining we have a limit on the number of people in the club but it's quite high never approached reaching it so the club is quite open and we welcome people we have a provisional period before full membership because we're a working class and we want to make sure people really know what they're getting in to that they really have to work can't just say you remember yes and so we do have a two year provisional period but we are very open and we'd love to have more people now currently as members of the book that you have about the flower show him as one hundred forty eight we actually have about seven new people coming in on the fall so i think for next year will be over one hundred fifty may is our annual meeting so we have those made igs monthly and then what did the members do you know not maybe daily but you know if you're a member of the club what do you do well there are many  the club we have a community planting committee we have our own greenhouse which members can join for three years and learn about plants in the greenhouses we have floral design classes we also have a committee that this is it's the belmont manor nursing home once a month and works with the residents there so we have we have various committe s things we also have the woodland garden at the library and there is all of those activities are open to members and we do have what we call workshops that you sign up for and members have to pay for materials with them but that's how people increase their skills in flower design or sometimes in horticulture we'll have a program on on how to divide things on how to prune or things like that and where do you when you get the classes and workshops where you hold those as much as possible we meet at the library because there's no rent that's actually our biggest expense as a club we have a few members meetings a year at st josephs and that's where the flower show is because we can get everybody in we the library doesn't seat hundred forty eight people but on average about seventy people come to a meeting so it works for us most of the time and we hold most of our workshops there some workshops are outside or in homes they  in their home and if you do you pay to become a member there is a membership fee every year for pick up your offices right and it and we use that budget to have the club function and  create the programs that we give every month in either horticulture or design and so we have to pay the speaker's rental fee and the various things that we do in the community we give scholarships every year to belmont students who apply d the most common thing now is people going into environmental studies but sometimes we get people who are going in landscape design we've had one person who was going to a cultural school so we've had different different things but it has to be somehow related to the purpose of the club right well that sounds really great i mean it's a fun organisation i love to play and do some work on a farm so it's really great ok let's talk a little bit about the show which also sounds really fun you don't have the show every year this is your eightieth anniversary so it's a marked more of a special just special thing yes so can you you can each talk about this and then i'll go through and talk about some of the categories but just as a general synopsis what someone is going to find when they come on june eleventh and twelfth i'll just say the difference between the two most common kinds of flower shows and then i'll let elaine talk about it because she is a nationally accredited flower show judge so she knows a lot more than i do but the two types of flower shows that people are familiar with are probably the like they are in bloom in at the m f a in boston which is where you interpret art work and we did a show like that last year tenniel and that where we interpreted historical artifacts from the town and next year we're going to do a similar show called books in bloom and we're going to be interpretating various books in the library they're going to have a number of authors and it's a it's a joint program with a lot of people but that is that sorry to interrupt you but interpret using flowers as part of the the piece is that when you're trying well there are different things you could take say if you're going to do a book you could take the title of the book and you could somehow relate that to some kind of flour you could take the overall setting of the book and do a floral interpretation know where the book for instance if it was set in egypt you might want to use  plants that would suggest egypt right now have a lot of ideas yeah i'm going to thank you but that kind of show is not judged and a lot of people enjoy doing it because it isn't judged this kind of show that we're doing this year is called the standard flower show and it is judged and the kind of show it's like is the boston massachusetts horticultural societies annual yes and what would you have to remain for to become what was your training to become a judge because i see your menu on it looks very hard it's not really hard it actually was a lot of fun but  took about five years now actually they hold the classes closer together in time so that you can become a judge much sooner but when i went through which is about over twenty years ago we it was one class a year so it took five years to go through and complete that part of it and in the meantime you are competing in flower shows in horticulture and designed to get your experience your judging flower shows as a student and then  you have to take written exams after every course and if you pass you go on to the next course or you have to retake it if you don't and then there's a final exam when you've completed all five courses and  you have to win a number of blue ribbons and both horticulture and design and you have to serve a time as a student judge and then you can become accredited and then your nationally accredited judge cross the country so  and as part of the study is it i definitely i understand that's going to be artistry and use of certain things but you also have to this might sound like a really naive question but do you have to learn about every kind of flower and its habitat and things like that as a judge not really but as experience the more experience you have the more familiar you are and judging the more familiar you are with plant materials of all kinds for both water culture and design so you know there are millions of  and i mean that's you know and that's that's a great question but it's just over time i mean there are people that know a lot i mean they know just about everything about plants but for me i think i still have a long way to go and i've been doing this for twenty years because there are so many and plants are constantly hybridized growers hybridise them so then you have new varieties a new species so you have to be familiar with that and that's why it's important to you know grow i have a large garden with all different types of specimens in them and you know familiarize yourself by going to our series and we constantly take courses as judges you keep your education going and there are some who are more of the i understand your membership is low in the male category are about in the judging category are there more men represented in that or is it still majority well massachusetts we have i believe over one hundred sixty five judges and we have exactly for some reason years ago we had a few more and they dropped out so and they you know weren't able to do it for various reasons you reach out to people maybe you know men who are that and like i say in the past we have had male judges it's just that for one reason or another there's only one now so yeah well he's been a judge a very long time as an instructor and  lectures all over the country so and he's won many top awards so he's very involved you know it's not just the ladies right maybe he's keeping the other man and let's talk about about the show i was looking for the through the program and the fun i'm really curious about individual one the design category for example when it says father's day what do you you know what serving a breakfast for a father to celebrate so basically what you would need would be you know it's in the service of food so you would need like a dish you know probably a glass or a mug you would need a napkin a placemat probably and then you'd have a decorative unit which is the floral design on the tray and so you do something probably more masculine looking as opposed to something very frilly you know if it was mother's day and there's water enters with what kind of how many or what kind of flowers you can use in that or is it sort of well everything would have to be in scale in proportion to the size of the tray and that's what the judges are going to looking for and how well all her components her dishes surpluses are carrying the theme out how they integrate with each other and how the floral design integrates with that and that's the sort of thing that they look for in these designs you interpreting the schedule are you are you in scale and proportion your flower is compatible and there is a scale of points that the judges go by for the different designs and how close you come to the criteria  is you know how well you do and how many how many participants can compete in each class for four for yes there's more places so it's first second third an honorable mention that because i was just going to say to give you an idea since it's a breakfast tray if you had a giant arrangement on there it might be absolutely gorgeous but if it were this tall and this wide and it's taking up half the breakfast tray you would not get a blue ribbon because it wouldn't be in scale to the tray so the arrangements on the tray are going to be small they're going to be small in skin they might some  be tall but it'll only be a small amount of flowers relative to the other types there where you may get some very elaborate arj scale pieces right and you were saying to me earlier that  it's judge the night before so i was asking if i when i come to the show i will see who's already won in the movie as it is judged on friday around ten o'clock we're having the judges come in and that's why we're opening it to the public at two because it will take them a number of hours to judge everything in the show right so i want to mention another one of them want to go on to a different category these are these sounds so fun and help out a garden party because that is less specific to when i'm reading this and the father say try like what do you mean a garden party what kind of design does this say is a traditional design using fresh cut and rooted plant material ok any anything so so basically that is a design that's using rooted plant material and if they can be house plants or they could be any wells that you want to incorporate into your design and you're also using cut fresh plant material which is you know your regular flowers like roses and lilies and peonies or whatever you choose to use and then usually there's also some trailing plant material in that to soften the edge of the container because that like a like an i v and a lot of people do those types of designs in baskets and where it's entitled the garden party that would be very appropriate to do right and there's there must be water there there is a water source because usually you line the basket with either a plastic container so that you can hold the water and a lot of times people put the rooted plants in little baggies so that they can keep moist and then you use the flowers in water picks so that they have a source of moisture as well and that's how you do it and at the show do you sell any flowers at the show from your greenhouse or from our plants because i would imagine people get really you know at a flower show i last unless for some reason there might be vendors at the show contract to come in we're not doing that in belmont the larger shows like the new england spring flower show as i do that wow yeah right they don't actually sell the flowers from the design spray but they have related items that they sell but because when you're walking through and seeing the exhibits  released for myself you're so inspired i'm so inspired that i want to go home and at least have some flowers  here how about this is one i'm not really familiar with as much which is flowering branches so what do you if you were going to bring their flower in range what do you looking for in that cat i understand the father's day trade has its artistry  but what do you look kind of thing to do you look for well the horticulture exhibits are judged against perfection so they're judged and again you have to be familiar with the different varieties and as a judge you usually are that are going to come into the show and it's a branch flowering branch such as the dog would or mountain laurel or or any of these flowering shrubs and trees that we have blooming now and  to be thirty inches or last because this is a requirement for the size and we display them in a horticultural glass it's usually a bottle where we have a water source and the judges again are judging against perfection so the best that this branch could be and then that they decide whether it's first second third fourth or honorable mention and if it's really if it's a really beautiful specimen and it has a name variety such as for a p anything festiva maximo which is an old for and then they are also eligible for top horticultural awards just like with the design of the very best are eligible for top design awards in the flower shows and i can give you a little bit of just from my personal experience last year there was a new england flower show that was small smaller than the in town one that was at elm bank and they needed a each of the judges has a clerk someone who writes down information in it's kind of a go for runs around and get things if they need it and so i was following the horticultural judge and it was very interesting to me to see how serious they were about it and how how much they looked we're trying to say which was the most perfect one among the husbands i would imagine that would be tough  along those lines if someone they must have to tell you when advance what they're going to be entering right for horticulture yeah like a branch because they just say what if your crop doesn't do well you've already put your name down ok now they just bring it in the entry day basically you just go in your garden and see what you think is you know worthy to bring in and you just bring it in so you don't have to commit to one of these categories now had not at all because with the weather and right you know different outsized sources you just you can never tell what is going to be perfect right to bring in for that particular day ok the last time we did one of these there were a lot of peonies and they were beautiful and there was even a section of but they're all gone now this year because it's been so hot so it's going to be a different selection the plants right my time is coming to a close i'm told but this is really it's  on the corner of common and school street right and is there any final words besides come to the show to say well i would just say that you can do exactly what you said you wanted to be a judge that's exactly what people love to do when they're there is to look at the four samples and design and say well i i wouldn't have given that when another lawyer had been you know that's you you can be your own judge and it is part of the fun of the show and in horticultural you can say that got a blue ribbon i got a nicer looking one of those in my yard right so that's what happens in the tough field fair when i take my kids and leave the pumpkin that's just like charlie rose yeah we can just  will encourage everybody to come to the show i want to thank my guests sherry jones and elaine di giovanni get it for coming on the show today thank you very very much th