Floral Design A Winner For Local Garden Club Member

By Nancy K. Crevier

For Margareta Kotch, winning a blue ribbon and tri-color award for her floral design at the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut Advanced-Standard Flower Show in Hartford, held at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, February 19 to 22, was not only a great honor, but a great surprise, as well.

Although she had won a blue horticultural award three years ago at the Newtown Town and Country Garden Club show, her entry this past weekend was the first time she had ever entered a design in a large, state flower show, said Ms Kotch. “I was so touched, so elated, to win!” she exclaimed.

The Connecticut State Flower Show has been hosting floral designers and horticulturists from all over the state for 28 years. The Horticulture, Design, and Special Exhibits division that make up the show are grouped under a theme each year, with “Of Thee I Sing” being the 2009 theme. The theme titles for each section and class, such as “Flags of Freedom” or “Hail to the Spirit of Liberty,” served as a general guide for the entrants, or as a source of inspiration.

Ms Kotch, who is pursuing accreditation as a designer/horticultural judge in the state, decided to enter the show in January. As part of the accreditation requirements, she must be awarded five blue ribbons, and she thought that the February show could give her some experience to do so. “I really did not think I would win,” she said. “There are a lot of very good designers there.”

Entries in the Section C “National Gallery” design division presented a floral interpretation of a painting hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Designers could select from three classes, “American Impressionists,” “American Painters of the Late 1800s,” or the class Ms Kotch selected, “Americans Abroad.”

Inspired by James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s “Grey and Silver: Chelsea Wharf,” she used an old tabletop reading lamp for the skeleton of her design, using the angled arm of the lamp to represent the fog-encased spars in Whistler’s painting, and delicately crafting living bird-of-paradise flowers, eucalyptus stems, and cyclamen leaves throughout the structure to pick up the orange and blue-greens in the art work.

“I picked the painting, and I knew the old lamp would work,” Ms Kotch said. At the suggestion of a fellow Newtown Town and Country Club member, a group she has belonged to periodically since 1971, she painted the lamp a deep gray, and removed the distracting electrical cord at the base. “I played with the design on and off, and finally settled on using the bird-of-paradise and adding the eucalyptus, and then the cyclamen leaves around the base, to cover it a little,” she said.

On Wednesday, February 18, she and her husband, Dr Philip Kotch, installed the entry, one of a dozen others entered in the “National Gallery” exhibition. But even on the night before, her work had required some finishing touches. “We realized it just looked too bare with nothing under it, so there we were running around to JoAnn’s Fabric, trying to find something for the base,” she said. The backside of some denim material stretched over a thin square of foam core provided just the right complement to the design, the subtly patterned gray material echoing the waters of “Chelsea Wharf.”

As a student judge at the show, she was busy assisting the master judges when a friend sidled up to her and whispered, “Congratulations! You won.”

“I walked back to my entry, and not only had I won a blue ribbon for the Class 9, but I had won the tri-color ribbon, awarded out of Classes 7, 8, and 9 in the ‘National Gallery’ design section,” Ms Kotch said. “It was quite a wonderful surprise.”

Ms Kotch also took second place for an additional entry in the “Highways and Byways” class of the Section G “Let Freedom Ring,” for traditional line design.

The tender flowers and greens that made up her winning design have faded away, but the lamp base will be reincarnated, said Ms Kotch, as a planter for fresh flowers in her home.

“I am so pleased to have won these awards,” said Ms Kotch, “but I could not have done it without the support of the Town and Country Club members and my husband.”