Muswell Hill and District Horticultural Society
M.H.D.H.S

 

The following was written on the Society's 75th anniversary:

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Imagine 1912. Try to imagine a glorious summer in a world in which Asquith and his Liberal government presided over an empire at its height, vying with the Kaiser’s Germany and Tsarist Russia for a dominant position in world affairs. A time when the horse was still the principal method of transport; when a five-bedroom house in Dukes Avenue cost £425; when Arsenal were a South London football club; and Muswell Hill was a prosperous suburb separated from a rapidly expanding city by what still is a maddeningly steep hill …

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It was in this genteel Edwardian world, seventy-five years ago, that the Muswell Hill and District Horticultural Society held its first show in the Athenaeum. It is a tribute to the hard work and efforts of presidents and patrons, secretaries, treasurers and committee members—but most of all the gardeners and exhibitors of Muswell Hill—that not one year has gone by since 1912 without the Society putting on a show. This is not to say that national and international politics have not affected the Society’s plans: the autumn shows in 1914 and 1939 were cancelled “owing to the country being at war”; preparations for the 1917 show were seriously disrupted by an air raid which caused organisers and exhibitors to hide in the Athenaeum’s basement for several hours; much of the Society’s records were “destroyed by enemy action” in 1940; and the three-day week of 1973 forced the cancellation of the Society’s winter whist drives.

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Although the Society was formally incorporated in early 1912, its origins were in a dahlia competition held in a shop window in Station Parade the previous autumn. The enthusiastic response of the public caused several prominent citizens of Muswell Hill to call for the formation of a horticultural society (originally only for the showing of roses and dahlias, but this stipulation was quickly dropped), and over 100 people attended the Society’s first meeting—a lecture on rose growing—in November 1911.

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The early shows were grand social affairs—meetings of the Muswell Hill gentry—with luncheons, speeches, dancing, and far-from-token prizes donated by the shopkeepers of Muswell Hill (top prize in the autumn 1913 show was half a ton of coal). The idea of the show being the backdrop for a social occasion lasted for many years. The records for 1928 show that the Society hired the Highgate Silver Band to play at the opening of the summer show and also for the dancing in the evening on the lawns of North Bank; a 90 × 30 foot marquee with 400 foot of staging was hired; prizes of silver and glassware purchased; side shows of hoop-la, sweet-la, pin and hoop and a conjuror arranged; Girl Guides formed a guard of honour for Lady Crossefield who opened the show; and two policemen were hired to patrol the grounds from 2 o’clock until 9, when the show finally closed.

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Unfortunately, such shows were expensive, and after several years of financial stress a motion was put before the annual general meeting in 1935 that the Society should be wound up. The motion was defeated, half the committee resigned, and the new committee embarked on a policy of financial prudence, making the exhibits the focal point of shows—a policy which has been followed to the present day, with excellent results.

That is not to imply that early shows were mere token affairs. The number of exhibits and exhibitors today is only slightly down on the numbers for those early years, although membership of the Society has steadily grown since the end of the last war.

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The Society does not limit its activities purely to shows. It arranges lectures and slide shows to encourage members to grow better plants. Outings to gardens take place, the first being to Wisley in the 1930s and then to places farther afield as transport became easier. During both wars the Society actively encouraged the creation of new allotments in Hornsey to provide extra food as its contribution to the war effort.

In the early 1950s there was a short-lived experiment of holding an annual dinner for members.

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The Society has celebrated anniversaries before, of course, the first being its Silver Jubilee which coincided with the coronation of George VI, when a joint show was held with neighbouring societies in Wood Green. Fifty years was marked by the planting of a maple tree outside the Muswell Hill Odeon. Although the plaque commemorating this has long since disappeared, the tree still flourishes. A thanksgiving service was held in St James Church to mark the Society’s Diamond Jubilee.

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It is, however, the exhibits and exhibitors who make a show. Over the years there have been many notable exhibits in the floral art, vegetable and cookery classes of the shows (the 1945 autumn show had 15 examples of a wartime Madeira cake, far and away the largest number of entries in a class that year, in spite of rationing), but it is the flowers, particularly roses which thrive in London clay, that attract most attention.

Varieties and styles of roses may come and go. Although the ever-popular “Dorothy Perkins” was winning prizes during the First World War and the 1970s, and the reporter for the Hornsey Journal might bewail the absence of “old English cottage flowers” and object to the showy new delphiniums in the 1910s, there has always been a plentiful show of colour at the Society’s shows.

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Over the past seventy-five years of the Society’s history (and probably for the next seventy-five too), four things have remained constant: the enthusiasm of members, the diligence and hard work of committee members, the beauty of the gardens of Muswell Hill, and, above all, the incomprehensible habits of the English weather …