While enjoying the fruits of our judging labors, I noticed a new-style ARS certificate? Is this what all certificates are going to be styled like when current supplies are exhausted?

You mean like this one?

Part of the value of striving for and winning a certificate class in an ARS Rose Show is the beautiful embossed certificates. It makes you feel that you have accomplished something.

I sure hope the exhibitors band together in some way to protest this change in the certificates. Suggestions, anyone??? I'm ready to jump on the bandwagon.

Suzanne Horn

Dick ordered one of everything.

I was really embarrassed when I saw those new certificates. What a joke.

I spend about $10,000.00 a year on my rose exhibiting hobby, when you include cutting edge roses, the best of everything money can buy in fertilizers, spray materials, potting soils, transportation containers, cold ice, florist refrigerator, exhibitor tools, and countless other expenses to make my roses the best that they can be such as seminars and travel to national conventions. And I am not alone in this, not by a long shot.

When exhibitors scan the show schedule, we pay close attention to which categories offer ARS certificates. Those are the most important classes, and the prime targets of our hard work.

I work a full time job, but still I'm out in the garden until well past dark every night, getting the roses ready for a show. I push myself to the brink of exhaustion every single day of a rose show week in order to have no regrets on the morning of the show.

Like my other serious exhibitor friends, I never ask myself why I do what I do on the day of a rose show. I'd never do it again. I get up at 2:00 in the morning with only a few hours of sleep, throw myself together, pack roses into crates and into the car while my significant other keeps up a running monologue of complaints, drive hours to get to a show, set up in a cold parking lot (often in inclement weather), and work like a madwoman for the three or four hours I'm allotted in order to get the most rose entries into a show by the cut-off time.

Then there's clean-up, which is another half hour, and then we wait for hours for the outcome in the hopes that our efforts will be rewarded - when what we'd dearly love to do is lie down and rest somewhere... anywhere. But we wait.. and hope... before the winners are announced, and we head back home to unpack before we get to crash.

Trophies are lovely things... but in the end, they go into their boxes at the show and are rarely if ever seen again. The golden ARS CERTIFICATES are what we proudly display on the wall and in albums. They are a representation that what we have achieved has worth.

I therefore respectfully suggest that this is not the place for the ARS to cut costs. Keep the beautiful certificates that exhibitors have come to prize, and do honor to the American Rose Society.

Suzanne Horn, exhibitor

It will cost my local society approx. $69 to buy ARS certificates for our rose show this year. I know that I can produce classier-looking certificates (compared to these new inferior ones) for a grand total of $5.00 for 50 cards.

Which brings up another matter. Our local rose society long ago gave up buying those ribbons at 45 cents apiece. We now use stickers that cost about a penny each. The ARS entry tags are now 10 cents each, so it will cost us $120 to buy 1200 entry tags from ARS. I have noticed recently that some societies are having their own entry tags printed locally, obviously because they can make their own for much less than what the ARS charges.

Having said that, I do think that ARS should be able to make a reasonable profit on show supplies but they shouldn't cheapen the product.

I do not know the people at ARS Headquarters, but I do know Marilyn Wellan, our ARS President. My experience is that she steps up to the plate in every instance to correct any problem or situation such as this one. She is responsive to the members and committed to the organization.

I believe that should enough members make their feelings known on this issue, that the Marilyn Wellan and the ARS staff will find a way to correct the situation.

Suzanne Horn, exhibitor

Evelyn

I sure hope the review group rectifies the certificate issue and gets us back to the beautiful certificates we exhibitors have come to prize. I swept Mini-flora Queen, King & Princess today, and they were all those awful new certificates. To say the least, it took the "bloom off the proverbial rose", especially when our District webmaster wanted a picture of me and my three certificates.

However, that was the last show of the spring. Hopefully, the review group will have corrected the problem by the fall shows. I don't suppose I can trade in these pseudo table cards for real certificates with ARS???

Suzanne Horn

Suzanne

If you are asking to exchange them for the new style that comes out of our committee work, that might be possible, but no one knows what the new ones will look like and you might not like them either. Let's wait to see what they look like and then decide if we will make any exchanges.

Phil

Suzanne

Suz