Challenge Classes

Rose shows have challenge classes, which call for specific varieties or colors.  Some specify that a hybrid tea, a floribunda, and a grandiflora be displayed together, or in separate containers.  Another popular category is for the most fragrant rose in the show, judged by a sightless person.  Yet another is for a dozen hybrid teas in one container (the effect of this is better than that of most arrangements).  There are many challenge classes, but here are my favorite two.

Multiple Specimens.  

This is the biggie.  Whatever other challenges there are, this is the trophy hard-nosed competitors vie for.

Any number of specimen blooms may be required, from three to more than nine, but the big award is almost always for five or six, and occasionally for specific colors.  Each specimen in an entry is displayed in a separate container, and a great deal of attention is given to how the roses are lined up to make the display as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Usually, hybrid teas are called for, but sometimes grandifloras grown one to a stem are allowed as well.  Overall size, balance, and proportion must be considered not only for each specimen, but for their combination.  Obviously, the individual entries must complement each other; otherwise, the exhibit will lack cohesiveness and symmetry.  All in all, this is the ultimate test for exhibition acumen.

English Box.  

I recall well the first time I saw one of the exhibits in this challenge class.  I thought it quit weird, and so might you.  Here, all is bloom; there is no stem. The blossoms are arranged to fit into a box shape, with only a few inches of stem left, and none of it showing.  Stems are immersed in water held in small vials under the holes cut into the open face of the box.  Boxes of six to twenty-four blooms may be specified; six is usual for entries in American shows.

Since no stem or foliage is seen, judging is for the bloom only.  Again, the bigger and more form the better.  Some shows call for blooms of only one variety in the English Box exhibits; most often, however, at least three varieties are specified.  The exhibitor must carefully consider color and size combinations.  As with other exhibits, an overall pleasing quality is the key.

Now after having seen many English Box exhibits, I have come to like them.  I have a box in my house that I often fill and display on a coffee table.  It's a great way of appreciating exhibition blooms, many of which never had a stem you wanted to look at anyway.

Bill Derveniotes, who staged the roses in this book for me to photograph, is about the best exhibitor I know.  He has won scads of blue ribbons and trophies for English Box entries, one of his fortes.  He'd like me to forget his first English Box entry, but I can't.  I was clerking that particular day, so I heard all the inside poop.

Neither Bill nor I had many roses then, but for this show he did have bushes of Lady X and Medallion that were in full bloom.  Lady X has never been one of my favorite roses.  All by itself its pale mauve color looks funereal; with anything else it's ghastly.  Medallion, on the other hand, is a wonderful light apricot.  When he mentioned combining them for an English Box entry, I turned up my nose.  He ignored me, knowing that I always sneered at anything having to do with Lady X.

When the judges arrived at the English Box entries, I got to hear everything they said, including one's asking another if the person who made that particular entry might be color-blind.  If a black-and-white photograph taken of the entries had been used for judging, Bill would have won hands down.  As it was, they gave him second place because the blooms were so well matched.