Dateline Rogers, Arkansas – May 2-4, 2008S

Southwest Regional Orchid Growers Association (SWROGA) Show

Orchid Society of Greater Kansas City Display. Photo By Ron McHatton

Congratulations are due the Orchid Society of the Ozarks (OSO) for hosting another successful Southwest Regional Orchid Growers Association (SWROGA) show! Held in the Embassy Suites in Rogers, Arkansas, the show featured at least 48 exhibits and attracted some 150 registrants. Among the attendees were 51 AOS judges so the show was certainly well-scrutinized! Ribbon judging started at 7:30PM Friday evening and at 2AM when it was all over 12 AOS awards had been garnered. Congratulations to all the exhibitors for their hard work! The OSO has a reputation for their outstanding trophies and it’s well deserved. Trophy winners were thrilled with the unique, original hand-blown glass orchid trophies representing each of the sections of the schedule.

Amazing use of wallpaper. Photo By Ron McHatton

The AOS show trophy went to a display staged by the Greater Kansas City Orchid Society and the picture here doesn’t do it justice. Executed “in the round”, the display was equally pleasing viewed from any angle and who would have thought that you could make wallpaper look so much like stone that one nearly had to touch it before realizing it was paper! That’s right, that material that looks like Serpentine rock is wallpaper and my hat’s off to Beth Martin who designed this display.

If you live in the area covered by SWROGA (roughly Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana) you’ll want to mark your calendars for the fall 2008 SWROGA show, November 7-9, hosted by the Red River Orchid Society in Wichita Falls, Texas. They aren’t going to be outdone!

Ron McHatton, AOS Director of Education and Regional Operations