Your Comments Please

By now you should have had an email from me asking for your thoughts on the organisation of Meet @ Malvern. If not, then please leave a comment here or email me so I can arrange to send it out to you.

Rather than having lots of questions about every aspect of our get together, I've tried to keep things simple by just asking what went well, what didn't go so well and what was missing. Helen and I also have our own thoughts and ideas on what we might have done differently, but we're keen to find out what you think too. Thanks to those of you who emailed me before I sent out the questionnaire, I'll be adding your comments to the mix. However, you may have something else to add...

Once we've received your comments, Helen and I will be getting together to discuss whether there'll be another Meet @ Malvern. We haven't decided yet, but we've already realised that arrangements will need to be simplified and/or shared out somehow in future. You can also help by letting me know if you thought anything was surplus to requirements or how things might be done differently. I've also asked you if you'd come to Malvern another time: the answer to that vital question could also affect whether we meet again!

Dull Garden Bloggers Unite

Back row (left to right) Lia - Midnight Brambling, Zoe - formerly Garden Hopping, Karen - Artists Garden, Gail - Clay & Limestone, Elizabeth - Welsh Hills Again, Easygardener - Greenforks, Michelle - Veg Plotting

Middle row (left to right) Claire - Plantpassion, YolandaElizabet - Bliss, Helen - The Patient Gardener, Ewa - Ewa in the Garden, Michelle - A Disorganised RHS Student

Front row (left to right) Frances - Faire Garden, Sally - The Constant Gardener, Victoria - Victoria's Backyard

For some bizarre reason people looked at me strangely when I said I was hosting a party for 20ish garden bloggers during the Malvern Spring Show. I never really understood why since to me having a group of friends around for the evening was never an issue. My complete faith in my garden blogging buddies was not misplaced - we had a fab evening, full of laughter, hugs, food and drink. For some reason there is a rumour out there in the blogasphere that garden bloggers are dull (as well as illiterate) - far from it and I think you can see that from the smiley faces above.

I am looking forward to the next time my garden bloggy friends decide to descend on me.

Exhibitors' Essentials #5

Innovation and new twists to traditional ideas. Auriculas are always popular at the shows and an Auricula Theatre is the oft used way of displaying them. Here, Pop's Plants of Wiltshire has taken this display form and given it a fresh twist by marrying it with the show's Silver Anniversary celebrations.

As a result, the display was chosen most days (if not all) as the winner for the People's Choice awards in the Floral Marquee category.

Exhibitors with all of my 5 essentials stand a very good chance of achieving #6: a gold medal. Here is Meet @ Malvern's as awarded by the multiple gold medal winning designer, Cleve West on our last day at the show :)

Exhibitors' Essentials #4

A great sense of humour. The label next to this rather striking dark-leaved dandelion read:

Taraxacum faeroense

(Asteraceae)

Great for a lawn display

Exhibitors' Essentials #3

A good name - click on the image to see what caught my eye ;)

I mean 'good name' in both senses of the word: not only an appropriate business one like the one shown above, but also a good reputation. The many nurseries who exhibit at Malvern have oodles of both as evidenced by these healthy plants in tip top condition ready to be snaffled up by visitors.

As well as the 100 or so nurseries exhibiting in the Floral Marquee, there were dozens more in the shopping areas. If you enter the show via the South Car Park you are greeted by a long row of specialist nurseries such as those pictured. Absolute heaven!

Like their marquee counterparts, these nurseries have exquisite displays to show off their wares in addition to the many rows of plants for sale. Jekka's Herb Farm was exhibiting here for the first time in 5 years and was awarded an unexpected gold medal. I hope to be catching up with Jekka soon, as she's kindly agreed to be a VP VIP :)

The second of the pictured nurseries is Heucheraholics (formerly the Solva 'Sweetie Shop'), who changed their name after Arabella Sock coined the term. It was great to see Sean again, who promptly shouted over to Jooles: Hey, it's VP, much to the consternation of their customers. I was duly presented with this year's pen and a Heuchera themed mousemat. Sean and Jooles will also be at Chelsea later this month, so do pop over and say hello to them if you're going there.

Exhibitors' Essentials #2

Attention to detail, dedication and infinite patience: here's just three of the hundreds of daisies Alex (one of the team of three designers) added to the Anniversary show garden's pristine turf by hand last week. Apparently one of the RHS judges tried his hardest to tug some of them out of the turf, failed and so declared they must be natural.

On Thursday the garden was open for vistors to stroll around and Alex had to cheerfully stand by as his two young children merrily ran and crawled all over the turf, picking many of the lovingly applied daisies as they went.

Update: Claire has written a piece on her blog about putting the show garden together with lots of great photos of the finished result :)

Exhibitors' Essentials #1

Trolley loads of quality plants to top up your stand's sales area, plus somewhere to make a decent cup of tea. Ahhhhhh, that's better.

I had a fantastic time at Malvern and from the posts and the buzz on Twitter I've seen so far it looks like everyone else did too. My mind's in a bit of a whirl at the moment, so I only feel capable of pulling out the odd image and a quick summary to tell you about what happened at the weekend.

Everyone else is being much better about telling you about their experiences and the show, so I'm going to hoover them up into a Mr Linky below so you can trawl through them all at your leisure. My dear fellow Malvern Meeters: do feel free add any posts of yours I've missed...