Sandy's Garden ... the Past and the Present of Polmont Flower Show

But 2020 is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a normal year.

For 2020 has seen the entire world fall under the thrall of COVID-19, a new strain of coronavirus that had not been previously identified in humans prior to an outbreak first detected in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, in November 2019.

The respiratory illness caused by the COVID-19 virus is readily passed from one person to another; and in the ten months since the first case was found, more than 25 million people worldwide have contracted the illness, which has killed wearing on for 850 000, including more than 41 500 in the United Kingdom.

As is only too well known, what was once regarded as normal life has been seriously disrupted, particularly in all matters relating to people meeting together in more than penny numbers.

One consequence of this has been the cancellation of this year’s show or, to give it its full title, the ‘Annual Show of flowers, fruits, vegetables, domestic produce and handicrafts.’

Only two events have caused Polmont Horticultural Society to cancel the show since the society’s inception in 1843 … the First World War and the Second World War … alongside both of which the COVID-19 pandemic pales into insignificance. But these two events are now in the past; and the pandemic is very much of the present, with no-one able to make even an educated guess at how long we must cope before this disruption to our lives becomes part of the past, nor any estimate of its long-term effects on society and life as we used to know it.

These sobering thoughts on the present position of, and future (?) of Polmont Horticultural Society, prompted a reflection on the society’s foundation 157 years ago.

On September 10, 1846, when the Society was three years old and the Falkirk Herald one year old, the Society’s fourth annual show was reported at some length in its columns.

The reference to Fruits, Flowers and Vegetables, all with capital letters, continues to this day, although the show has been extended to include domestic produce and handicrafts. There is a particular fascination in the correspondent’s note that, “the Society is specially deserving of support, not only as affording prizes to its members generally, whereby professional gardeners and richer members have the better chance of being successful competitors, but as, by setting aside a portion of the funds solely for distribution in prizes to the Cottagers - a class numerous in the district - it has made itself the means of diffusing and encouraging among that class a taste for Horticulture, both ornamental and useful.”

How sad that there will be no 2020 show for the Herald to report. So, in line with the current media fashion to repeat reports of past events, I shall present a report on the 1851 show next week.