'Official' Show Photographs
Tonight's posting is from the Loughborough Show. Pictures of several of the best plants, taken by Jim Almond at the same time as I took mine, have already been posted in the Show Results Photo Gallery, so I will try to avoid replicating these.

Dionysia Annielle from Paul and Gill Ranson

Dionysia iranshahrii shown by Paul and Gill Ranson

Dionysia Mike Bramley, shown by Ju Bramley

Primula allionii Judy Burrow, shown by Brian Burrow

Primula allionii Pinkie shown by Geoff Rollinson

Miniature Garden shown by David Philbey
Photo taken in sunshine in my garden the following day.

Callianthemum farreri shown by Dave Riley
Fascinating, and unfamiliar.

Crocus pelistericus shown by John Richards

Fritillaria alburyana shown by Geoff Rollinson

Narcissus Jim Lad shown by Barry and Anne Wright
(Narcissus rupicola x asturiensis)

The Artistic Section
Loughborough is the first show of the year to have an artistic section; here are a few samples.

Crocus abantensis by Jean Morris

Dryopteris cycadia by Anne Wright
This beautiful painting won the award for the best painting or drawing for Anne. I promised Peter Maguire after the show I would post a photo of it; sorry it took so long.

Fritillaria species by Jon Evans

Finally, several people have asked me if I would post a small version of this piece of digital manipulation.

This image was inspired directly by viewing 17th century flower paintings and still life, by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Bosschaert and others. The style of the day was to set a vase containing a bouquet of many different flowers against a dark background to give them a luminous quality. Many of the paintings also include wildlife of various sorts, mainly insects but also lizards and frogs.

I wanted to produce a similar effect using a montage of photographs. I started with a large pot of Fritillaria elwesii, exhibited by Bob and Rannveig Wallis at the Kent Show 2007. To this were added layers with stems from many other pans; the sharp-eyed should be able to spot plants exhibited by various exhibitors over the last few years as F. acmopetala ssp. wendelboi, amana, ariana, , aurea, aff. bithynica, conica, crassifolia, crassifolia ssp. kurdica, drenovskii, forbesii, latakiensis, pyrenaica 'Kathleen Hall', rhodocanakis, sewerzowii, striata and thessala. There is no intention to suggest that all of these would flower at the same time, or that they could actually be grown in the same pot ? some of these species require vastly different conditions from others.

To this burgeoning potful, I then added layers containing a variety of insects I have photographed. Again there is no suggestion that it would be possible to encounter all of these at the same time, or that they are naturally associated with the fritillaries in the wild, with the exception of the two wee red beasties, lily beetles, which would devastate a pot like this in a very short space of time.