So what’s the big deal?

The other day, a friend asked me about Flower Show Judge School. Why am I doing it, and what’s the big deal? Well, since you asked, here goes….

The first year I was the Chair of the Coronado Flower Show, the difficulty in getting qualified judges to come judge the show was frustrating. It takes a lot of people, roughly 40, to judge the show. Some of the judges are getting up there in age, not to mention the competition with other flower shows who also need qualified judges. To maintain our status as a Standard Flower Show, we must have the required number of judges, and that’s getting harder each year.

Why do we need judges at the flower show? Under the ruling of National Garden Club (NGC), it is required to have three NGC accredited judges, or two accredited judges and an NGC student judge. There are some exceptions to these rules, but I don’t want this post going on for pages! Anyway, the reason to be under the ruling of NGC is to be able to judge a show with the Standard System of Awarding, which is based on perfection and provides a consistent level of judging.

For the first time in a long time, National Garden Clubs was offering the Judge’s School on the west coast at Quail Gardens, so six of us on the Flower Show committee decided to go for it. That was about two years ago. We just finished the fourth session of two days of instruction and then, a long test on the third day. It is pretty intense having to cram a lot of information in for two days and then have to write it all out on the third day. The best part of getting the test done is that our group goes out to lunch, and we visit different area nurseries to decompress. We’ve done this four times, six months apart. Now that we have finished the four sessions, we now have to write a flower show schedule that will be graded. Each of us got a different assignment so we can’t really do our project together. After that is done and we have passed, we will have to take a final master test, but not before we enter floral design and horticulture entries in other standard shows AND score 90 points or above on at least five entries. These flower show judge requirements are time consuming! It’s no wonder that judges are hard to come by!

Once we meet all these requirements, and become full-fledged flower show judges, we are qualified to judge anywhere in the United States. Judging etiquette says that we are not allowed to ask to judge; we must be invited. Will I make it to the end? I’m assuming so, but I don’t see myself judging floral design. I think I’ll be a horticulture judge. That is much more interesting for me than design, mainly because design still seems overwhelming to me. Maybe time and experience will change that, but time will tell.

Everyone still awake out there?……

Tagged as: Flower Show, flower show judging