By Carol Wong, President

Why is it important that we belong to the Northern California-Nevada-Hawaii (NCNH) district, the national American Rose Society, and indirectly, the World Federation of Rose Societies? The World Federation held its 2016 meeting in Beijing, China for the first time. That conference kick-started the Chinese into developing not one but at least 3 huge rose gardens for their population, with the goal of having 100,000 roses in each garden! The blooming roses are often in pots and set into huge structures of characters and symbols, beds of solid colors and even the heritage roses of China. If that was the response in China, what will other countries do? Now you can visit those rose gardens when nothing like them existed previously!

Being part of a regional, state, national and international organization gives us local societies access to research and expertise, plant development and sales, and criteria which help us define what members want or need. We use their criteria to show, make arrangements with, and photograph roses. When local societies could not muster the resources or personnel to hold the last NCNH district conference, the district directors took on the job. They asked all societies to contribute. The three-day conference cost $26,000! Five PRS members attended; Jerry Georgette, who helped make the first-ever photography show a huge success, Priya Kamath and Pam Schenk who helped clerk the arrangements, and Weldon and I, who helped clerk in the horticulture show. It was fun and a great learning experience.

Now the district is planning for future classes to help us learn how to enter, judge, and produce shows of our own in the areas of photography and arrangements. To help societies expand the numbers of members who can develop expertise, they will be holding classes next year. Watch for announcements of the classes. We volunteered to host a Consulting Rosarian class next June in our Redwood City Veterans Building. We hope that we can attract many others as well as our own members to step up their game and learn how to be CRs. Please think about making the steps to develop your own knowledge and skills. There is so much to learn and you learn to help yourself and many others.