4-9Jul22
Fobbs Display
at Hampton Court Flower Show
Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey, Surrey. KT8 9AU.
Following many years of successful club shows at RHS Wisley, Sutton Bonsai Society offered to represent FOBBS at the Hampton Court flower show, which is the first time a FOBBS member has displayed at this show. Following months of tree preparation and finessing the weekend arrived for the build, over the next three days we need to pull everything together to form a display that the public and more importantly the Judges will appreciate and love. Having been involved with many RHS builds over the years I know that frequently what you ask for is not always what you get! The prebuilt Tokonoma is 3m square and has its own legs, but the RHS show crew setup a 4x4m green hessian base, but we decided to work with it rather than take it to pieces and start from scratch!! So, the four-sided Tokonoma had its legs discarded and was built on top of the RHS base. Not as easy as you would think, as the base is built straight onto the ground which, unsurprisingly, isn’t level! A few more hours were spent making blocks and spacers to even things up, and achieve level, then everything will align as we build upwards. During any build, time just fly’s by, and before we knew it every other exhibiter around us had gone and we were still finishing the first coat of paint!!! Painting continued until after 7.30pm so it has time to dry before the next day’s work. The judges do not like to see excessive hessian so after a lot of head scratching and rapid overnight design decisions we did the following. Identified and dug up some nice, aged, paving slabs from a member’s garden, brought in more accent plants and Japanese themed items and finally managed to scrounge four bags of bark chippings from another exhibiter, to not only pull the design together but also hide the gaps between the hessian and the Tokonoma. The final day is there for the detailing, caulking all the joints, more painting, dusting and most importantly arranging the trees and accents on each side so the display is balanced and shows the trees off to their best, last but not least spread out the bark chippings. As always, the devil is in the detail, anything that catches your eye will be picked up by the judges and loose you marks and hence medal places. So it’s important to stand back, look at what you have done and be critical of your work, then make adjustments accordingly. I’m not going to talk about the displayed trees in detail as I think the attached pictures do a much better job than me. The club members displayed some amazing trees with some being in their personal ownership for over 30 years, this gives a level of refinement that is difficult or impossible to match. Most importantly what did the judges think.... GOLD..... what a fantastic result for our first time at this show... we did pick up some comments... bark chippings could be finer... but not knowing where they came from beggars can’t be choosers..... and GOLD is GOLD anyway.
As always, the public never fail to disappoint in their questions.. how old is it, how much is it... I even had to ask one lady NOT to pick up the accent plants... her response... “I’m just checking if its plastic!” My response “did you really pay for a ticket to look at plastic plants at an RHS event!!”
So for next year it would be fantastic to have another FOBBS member take up the batten and see if we can keep this winning streak going at Hampton Court.
Andy Jordan
Chairman
Sutton Bonsai Society
Fobbs Display
at Hampton Court Flower Show
Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey, Surrey. KT8 9AU.
Following many years of successful club shows at RHS Wisley, Sutton Bonsai Society offered to represent FOBBS at the Hampton Court flower show, which is the first time a FOBBS member has displayed at this show. Following months of tree preparation and finessing the weekend arrived for the build, over the next three days we need to pull everything together to form a display that the public and more importantly the Judges will appreciate and love. Having been involved with many RHS builds over the years I know that frequently what you ask for is not always what you get! The prebuilt Tokonoma is 3m square and has its own legs, but the RHS show crew setup a 4x4m green hessian base, but we decided to work with it rather than take it to pieces and start from scratch!! So, the four-sided Tokonoma had its legs discarded and was built on top of the RHS base. Not as easy as you would think, as the base is built straight onto the ground which, unsurprisingly, isn’t level! A few more hours were spent making blocks and spacers to even things up, and achieve level, then everything will align as we build upwards. During any build, time just fly’s by, and before we knew it every other exhibiter around us had gone and we were still finishing the first coat of paint!!! Painting continued until after 7.30pm so it has time to dry before the next day’s work. The judges do not like to see excessive hessian so after a lot of head scratching and rapid overnight design decisions we did the following. Identified and dug up some nice, aged, paving slabs from a member’s garden, brought in more accent plants and Japanese themed items and finally managed to scrounge four bags of bark chippings from another exhibiter, to not only pull the design together but also hide the gaps between the hessian and the Tokonoma. The final day is there for the detailing, caulking all the joints, more painting, dusting and most importantly arranging the trees and accents on each side so the display is balanced and shows the trees off to their best, last but not least spread out the bark chippings. As always, the devil is in the detail, anything that catches your eye will be picked up by the judges and loose you marks and hence medal places. So it’s important to stand back, look at what you have done and be critical of your work, then make adjustments accordingly. I’m not going to talk about the displayed trees in detail as I think the attached pictures do a much better job than me. The club members displayed some amazing trees with some being in their personal ownership for over 30 years, this gives a level of refinement that is difficult or impossible to match. Most importantly what did the judges think.... GOLD..... what a fantastic result for our first time at this show... we did pick up some comments... bark chippings could be finer... but not knowing where they came from beggars can’t be choosers..... and GOLD is GOLD anyway.
As always, the public never fail to disappoint in their questions.. how old is it, how much is it... I even had to ask one lady NOT to pick up the accent plants... her response... “I’m just checking if its plastic!” My response “did you really pay for a ticket to look at plastic plants at an RHS event!!”
So for next year it would be fantastic to have another FOBBS member take up the batten and see if we can keep this winning streak going at Hampton Court.
Andy Jordan
Chairman
Sutton Bonsai Society
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