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02-25-2017 01:17 PM |
Cactus and succulent societies have gone nuts over "staging" plants for shows, putting each one into a very expensive container with just the right top dressing, rocks, etc. They have categories for "bonsai" succulents where ribbons are often awarded to plants that, while definitely manipulated into strange contortions, rarely follow the tenets of bonsai. I am not interested in this at all; I only care about the plant. Nowadays a beautiful plant in a plastic nursery pot is often completely overlooked by judges in favor of an inferior plant in an expensive piece of baked clay.
I really like that AOS judging is supposed to be about the flower, not the plant (except for the CCM of course.) In US cactus and succulent judging the staging gets up to 25% of the points, depending on the show rules. The British C&S society rules request judging of just the plant.
To my mind the staged succulents should have their own category, and most of the show should be about plants, even if in ugly plastic pots. When I'm asked to judge a C&S show I follow the rules, but I make an effort to get the other judges to look at the plants before looking at the staging.
This drive to exhibiting elaborately staged succulents has largely come from nurserymen who sell expensive pots and pre-staged, ready-to-show succulents.
I exhibit at the masters level. I don't care about ribbons nor trophies any more, so on the rare occasion I bother entering, I often often put my plants into pieces of junk I pick up at thrift shops, and top dress with stuff like fluorescent aquarium gravel. Once I entered a dish garden that was in a screaming pink and white striped, 2' / 61cm diameter plastic laundry basin. I arranged a number of smaller cacti around a Barbie doll with a tiny beach towel and beach umbrella, with white play sand. Yes, Barbie had little sunglasses.
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