Annual Disley & Lyme Horticultural Show Review

Aug 21

3 min read

The show team and our army of volunteers have been enjoying a well-earned rest after delivering yet another fabulous show. The Committee is extremely grateful to everyone who showed their support by visiting on the day.

Special thanks go to all those who battled with the challenging growing conditions to enter produce in the marquee. It was nice to see lots of new exhibitors entering the competition classes for the first time, with a good mix of experienced growers and novices winning trophies.

It turned out to be a brilliant day and it was one of our best attended events for a number of years, with gate admissions an amazing twenty four percent up on last year. This amounted to over 1400 people on the field.

This year, we made better use of the marquee by introducing short talks from our specialist exhibitors who covered a wide range of interesting topics including Bees, Hornets, Hedgehogs, Cacti, Alpines and ‘What it’s like to work on a nursery’. All proved to be very popular.

We also decided to extend the showground and, by using all the space available, it allowed us to introduce a larger area for the pet arena, with all-round viewing, and more room for new stallholders to be added.

We have always strived to find the right balance to make the day sufficiently interesting to all age groups, whilst retaining the atmosphere of a good, traditional village show. We have had lots of positive feedback from stallholders, vendors and the public, which makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Now it’s time to start planning for next year!

2027 will see our 120th show. Looking back through the records is quite an eye-opener, in that the challenges facing the show committee over the years are exactly the same now as they were then! What will the weather be like and how can we prepare for extremes on the day? How will the hot/cold/wet weather affect the quality of the flowers and vegetables? How can we encourage more entries for the competition classes? How can we best market the event to ensure a good attendance? How many volunteers will we have to help? All these questions were raised in the 1970’s and 1980’s and were all on our agenda during the build-up to this year’s show.

Admittedly, some of the challenges today are a little different: Can we get a decent Wi-Fi signal? Can we get 5G? What happens if we have a power cut while entering the data to calculate the class winners? This did actually happen in 2025, but we got through in the end! How many credit card readers do we need and what cash floats are necessary? We also have to be more security minded and be aware of current social practices and legislation.

Our aim, however, is always the same – to put on a show worthy of our reputation for the local community to enjoy, whilst adhering to the principles of a good old traditional family day out.

To this end, we are looking to enhance 2027 by adding some further activities for the field and re-introducing an evening ‘beer and bands’ event in the marquee following the show. More information on what we have planned will be released early next year.

And what of the future? Maybe we will have a Committee of robots chaired by AI instead of AM ………or maybe not!

Alan Morris (chair)