Wisconsin Garden Club Convention

This weekend is the Wisconsin Garden Club Federation Annual Meeting. Its title is “Embracing Native Elegance”. (Garden Clubber’s always have a theme and follow it throughout the convention, show, etc.)  This is the main entry exhibit.

This is the "Elegant" side

This is the "Nature" side

This is an installation year which means a change of officers. This year Madison District is hosting the affair. There are 7 Districts and each one takes a turn at hosting. Some Districts have very few members with just a couple clubs and then there are larger Districts that contain many clubs and members like Madison and Milwaukee.  All do a FANTASTIC job!!!!!  These events take years of preparation, organization, solicitation and volunteer hours.

These are some display arrangements

Friday morning I was “installed” (always think of draperies or a sink as being installed- not a person, ha!) as President of the Wisconsin Judges Council. I also was in charge of the workshop the judges participated in. Claudia Chopp presented our program on a new design style containing armatures. She is a fabulous designer that travels the world participating in and organizing flower shows. She showed us 3 styles of armatures and explained what we should be watching for as we make these as a competitive floral design or judge this style of floral art. These are some of Claudia’s creations:

Armature of Tall myrtle branches

s:

Hanging armature of reed and
vertical armature of gutter guard and wire

Our Judges Council is the largest collection of floral designers in the state organization so we are often asked to do designs to decorate the hotel and do design programs. These are some from around the hotel.

By Dawn

By Carole

By Liz

On the check in table

This is one of the centers from Friday evening’s meal function. Tomatoes, asparagus and peppers were the theme. There were 65 tomatoes used overall and each person guessed how many were used and that’s how the designs were given away.

Today is the “BIG” business meeting, tours in the morning, workshops in the afternoon, and the banquet tonight. Sunday is a wrap up day and I am part of the floral design luncheon program. I have planned on doing a spatial thrust. Several of us are doing a design “live” and one of Madison judges will do the commentary. Hope my flowers last till then!

My Spatial thrust - Flowers lasted!

Tubular Design

Creative design

Creative Design

Under water Design

Unique use of "mystery package"!

Because I was unable to connect to the internet while at the convention I am now home completing my entry. At the luncheon each of the six designers were given a "mystery" package of flowers which we were to incorporate into our design. I receive some purple monti casino asters which fir perfectly with my color scheme. Kitty received a pack of multicolored miniature carnations. She was using large scale tropicals - Birds of Paradise and aspidistra leaves - in a handmade  paper free form container./Rather than distort the whole design, she incorporated the entire wrapped package as a design element. That's thinking outside the box!