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Priority Order Line Leamington Spa 01926 424826 - Inspirational Flowers, Champagne, Belgian Chocolates, - Priority Order Line 01926 424826
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Tatton Park 24th July 2010
BackgroundOn the 24th July The British Florists Association held a national competition at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show, the competitors were notified of their eligibility to compete on 30th April, but with 1 week to go a competitor unfortunately had to pull out.
An e mail was circulated to the members of the association to see if anyone would like the opportunity to compete, Sarah Horne of Sarah Horne Flowers read the e-mail and decided that although it was very short notice, it would be good practice to help her with her first International competition this November in France, Sarah made the call but unfortunately the place had already been taken, so she relaxed and enjoyed her weekend, only to receive a call on Monday to say that another competitor had dropped out and there was indeed a place if she wanted it.
With just 3½ days to go this would be madness to most people to pull together 6 pieces of work to competition standard and take them all to Tatton Park to display, but to Sarah it was even more tempting to do as the French competition is without prior notice of the flowers, and Sarah was looking for practice in putting ideas together on a short timescale. Sarah's team rallied around and made the trip possible while Sarah burned the midnight oil to put all of the designs together.
The pieces were made, the car was packed and Sarah and Jean headed for Tatton, "there were a few trauma’s along the way" explained Sarah, "we unloaded our work on Friday evening and as I put the wedding design down the floor bounced and it landed on its head!", I was allowed to take it and repair it overnight thank-fully, and then on Saturday morning in set up time the handtied design fell over but luckily there no damage to it, there had been so little time to think about the work that I took the advise of good friend who competes far more than I do....he told me to think of the word KISS which stands for Keep It Simple Stupid!, which I did.
The booth’s were completed by 11am and the competitors then had to leave them, until the results were announced at 3pm.
And the winner is...“To my utter amazement I was announced as the winner and I had won £500, I couldn’t stop shaking” said Sarah, "what was even more thrilling for me was that when I spoke to one of the judges I was told that the marks for my individual floristry pieces swept the board; 1st place for every one, I had lost some marks for overall display but my individual marks were so high that I still won by a good margin and my all over score was just short of 91%."
SARAH HORNE, AIFD, CFD