The judges we’re gushing over this auricula grown by Judith Sellers from New York state.
A Walk at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Boylston, Massachusetts
Spring weekends in May are busy enough, with all of the transplanting, dividing, seed sowing, rototilling, garden clean-up, pruning, raking, and garden center cruising, when you throw in two major flower shows – it can really get crazy. But we would not do it if we didn’t love it, right? This past weekend hosted the New England Primrose Society show at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, MA, a show we annually host at this weekend, a date which we share with the Seven States Daffodil Show.
If you have never been to a flower show, it’s a routine that enthusiasts eagerly and grudgingly await for, the highlight of the year for many who love, collect and grow a particular genus. Moreover, it is a social event, a time where one can do more than meet, and compete, since these weekends are more about early breakfasts in the cold, lunchmeat luncheons with coffee and pastry, but since people drive and fly in with thier precious cargo, it is also a time of party’s and cocktail events in the evening at local members’ homes ( like ours), which is fun. All in all, it’s a quite like a holiday, for ‘family’ members who connect over a passion ( plants) who exchange with thier long lost friends, gifts of highly desired plants, a cutting or a seedling, a glass of wine, and a time to catch up with gardening stories. Here, a group of like-minded people can leave spouses at home, and sit in a room of total strangers, and all have a conversation and glass or two of wine with new friends, all who have an immediate connection with a plant that they love – instant friends.
The gardens at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, a public horticultural center in the middle of Massachusetts formed twenty years ago when the Worcester Horticultural Society sold it’s exhibition hall ( Horticultural Hall) in downtown Worcester, and purchased a farm high on a hill in nearby Boylston, MA) with the ultimate goal of creating a major botanic garden. Currently in Phase 2 of a long-term strategic plan, the gardens are beginning to grow into a magnificent space.
A view of the Daffodil hall where tidy rows of Narcissus species and hybrids are displayed and judged against each other, at the Daffodil Society’s Seven State Daffodil Show.
Aurucula expert, Susan Schnare exhibited many of her auricla primroses, and many won blue ribbons.
A stunning auricula grown by Susan Schnare, took top honors at the New England Primula Show.
An impressive pan of Primula marginata grown by Kris Fenderson of New Hampshire.
