Rose festival blooms

The competitors with their roses.

By DANE LILLINGSTONE

THE 53rd annual St Mark’s Women’s Guild Rose Festival has seen another successful year of colourful competition.
The Parish Hall on Grafton Street hosted this year’s event with a range of prizes and some beautiful roses on display.
It was noted that this year wasn’t easy on rose growers with weather a constant problem. Leading up to the event, Warwick and the Southern Downs suffered from some strong winds that were not in the favour of rose growers.
Judge Glynn Close from Allora was visibly emotional at the roses on display and acknowledged the difficulty some had this year.
“It wasn’t easy and everyone needs to remember it’s the opinion on the day,” she said.
“There were a lot of beautiful roses.”
The big winner on the day was Cheryl Sondergeld who took home a handful of awards including champion rose, bowl of roses and another few coloured rose awards.
Graham and Nancy Hoey were the other big winners winning reserve champion rose and the one rose award.
Other winners included Kay Ireland who took home the vase or bowl award, Narelle Goodwin who took the three yellow roses gong, Matt Meek for the novice (any rose colour) award and Merle Bamberry who won the florabunda award.