Driving down to Devon in mid-March can be a trial, with narrow roads and steep gradients.  However, the displays of wild Primula vulgaris (common primrose) and Prunus cerasifera (cherry plum) along the high verges cheer the senses along the way.

This time of year is renowned for unpredictable weather, and indeed on the day of the show we had to drive through snow, hail, gales and driving rain before the sun finally shone on the lovely garden of RHS Rosemoor, where we were given a warm welcome from hard-working show secretaries Jon and Kana Webster and their team of local helpers.  Jon and his team at Rosemoor had put together an attractive display which was given a Silver Award.

This year the Gardens were looking especially fine with magnolias and camellias unaffected by early frosts as they so often are at this time of year, underplanted with spectacular carpets of Narcissus bulbocodium and N. cyclamineus.

The AGS show at Rosemoor is the furthest south and west of all our shows, but is well supported by exhibitors. AGS shows are a shop window for the society’s best growers who frequently drive long distances to display their plants, representing the pinnacle of what is possible in the cultivation of alpine plants.  At Rosemoor we saw a range of plants from varying temperate climates of the world: high alpine cushion plants, bulbs from Mediterranean and steppe climates, woodland plants, unusual orchids and many more plants to excite our senses. The local groups also encourage members to show off their plants, and for several this is the only show at which they exhibit. This show is also a great hub for the south-west gardeners, encouraging visitors to view the show, buy plants from specialist nurseries and visit the RHS gardens.

Bob and Rannveig Wallis are supreme bulb growers and exhibitors, winning the Exeter Trophy for the Open Section Aggregate.  They won the Farrer Medal for the best plant in the show – a pot of the wonderfully pink Acis trichophylla.  

Also among their winning plants was a fine group of Chionodoxa luciliae, winning them a Certificate of Merit.  Botanists now consider Chionodoxa to be part of Scilla, but Chionodoxa is visually distinctive, as the flowers have an obvious perianth tube, and wide, flattened filaments forming a central cone round the ovary and style.

Bob and Rannveig are well-known for growing a wide range of Fritillaria, and brought along several interesting species of that genus, including F. minima showing variation from seed with varying amounts of green on the backs of the tepals and F. eastwoodiae, now regarded as a putative hybrid between F. recurva and F. micrantha.  The pot contained three stems, showing different amounts of yellow, orange and red in the flowers, highlighting the hybrid origin of this species. Also of great interest was a pot of F. olivieri with a collection number of PF2057, which is from the original Paul Furse collection of this species in 1962.

There were several other top bulb growers to help spread the trophies, and George Elder staged an excellent display of 3 bulbs, winning 5 trophies in total.  The Veitch Trophy for three pans of bulbous plants went to him for his exhibit of Erythronium oregonum, the almost black-flowered Wurmbea recurva (also winning a Certificate of Merit) and Fritillaria davisii – a lovely even potful of dark maroon bells – which also won the East Devon trophy for the best plant in a pan not exceeding 19cm.

To contrast with the bulbs on show, Paul and Gillian Ranson brought many pots of Dionysia, winning them the Peter Edwards Memorial Trophy for the most first prize points in the Primulaceae classes.  Their plants included the lovely white Dionysia ‘Geist’ raised by Michael Kammerlander.  Paul does a sterling job in keeping the AGS encyclopaedia Dionysia section up to date, and this is a very useful resource:

http://encyclopaedia.alpinegardensociety.net/plants/Dionysia/hybrid

Only recently moved into the Open Section, but successfully holding his own, local grower David Carver brought a van-load of interesting plants, with many bulbs including gladiolus, erythroniums, fritillarias and narcissus.  He also brought a few more unusual bulbs including the rarely seen Tecophilaea violiflora, a plant sometimes confused in seed exchanges with Tecophilaea cyanocrocus ‘Violacea’, although the latter has much bigger seed.

I was particularly interested to see David’s entry of 3 pans orchids, as all were from the rarely grown genus of Serapias: S. parviflora x lingua, S. olbia dark form (thought to be of hybrid origin between S. neglecta and S. lingua) and S lingua ‘Richard Manuel’ in a very well-grown potful with astonishing yellow tongues hanging out.

Alongside the more experienced growers, it was good to see strong support for the Novice and Intermediate Sections from the local group members who brought a good variety of interesting plants.

Dick Fulcher showed Eustephia coccinea (which, in common with many of the Central and South  American Amaryllids, has been included in several other genera in recent years, including Amaryllis, Hippeastrum, Phaedranassa and Phycella).  Whatever the name today, the plant was very striking with its bright orange-red trumpets.

Alistair Hudson’s Anemonella ‘Schoaf’s Double Pink’ won the Cornwall Trophy for best plant in the Intermediate Section.  This is a delicate early spring plant of open woodlands in Eastern North America. The double forms are much sought after for their greater lasting quality.  Oscar Schoaf spotted the unusual double pink form of the species in a graveyard in Owatonna, Minnesota, among a group of the common single white variety, and recognized its distinction.

He tried to sell the plants to a nursery without success but continued to grow the plants in his garden. He gave 2 clumps of the plant to Louise Koehler (a renowned grower of native plants) who divided them and soon had hundreds to distribute to friends and nurseries.

Lincoln (‘Linc”) Foster, wrote of the Anemonella in the July 1966 Bulletin of the American Rock Garden Society (later NARGS) during his term as president and proposed that this unusual form be known as Anemonella thalictroides ‘Schoaf’s Double Pink.’ The name sometimes appears as Anemonella thalictroides ‘Oscar Schoaf’.

Duncan Bennett won the Dartmoor Trophy for the Intermediate Section aggregate with an excellent selection of Saxifraga all neatly named on slate labels showing the parentage of the various cultivars.  His 3-pan included the peachy-lemon Saxifraga ‘Michelangelo’ (kotschyi x pulchra), S. ‘Crinoline’ (iranica x dinnikii) and S. ‘Allendale Ballad’ (media x diapensiodes) which has good contrast between its palest pink flower and neat encrusted rosettes.

In the Novice Section, Helen Brown won the Dartington Trophy for the most points, and the Otter trophy for the best exhibit.  Her pots contained nicely-grown plants which would all grow well in the open garden. They included: Anemone x lipsiensis ‘Pallida’, a hybrid between our native A. nemorosa and A. ranunculoides, and Primula ‘Dark Rosaleen’ which was recently bred in Ireland by Joe Kennedy and named after an Irish poem by James Clarence Mangan.

Joe Kennedy has been breeding primroses in Ireland for many years and his primroses are popular all over the world, and known simply as ‘Irish Primroses’.  In common with many others from his breeding programme, ‘Dark Rosaleen’ has dark foliage which looks good in combination with other plants in the garden.  The form of the flower is known as hose-in-hose, whereby the calyx is formed like the petals of a second flower nestling outside the original flower.

I was delighted to see the classes for seed raised plants in the Intermediate Section were dominated by plants originating from AGS seed.  Richard Horswood won the Intermediate seed raised class with Lewisiopsis tweedyi (AGS seed sown in December 2022).  After less than two years from seed, this plant was already displaying half a dozen lemon blooms with more to come.  In the same class, second place went to Jim Loring, another aficionado of the AGS seed exchange, with a spike of Fritillaria affinis grown from AGS seed sown in December 2016, a longer undertaking than the Lewisiopsis. I checked this donation and was pleased to discover that this seed was collected in California by the great North American seed collector, Ron Ratko.

Reporter: Diane Clement
Photographer: Jon Evans