The fourteenth annual

A new winner, a familiar rule, and a fourth way of counting the show's years.

A headline, three decks and two paragraphs, set apart below because the second paragraph only means what it means beside the first. Two trophies, two winners, two seconds — and the two cups are judged on entirely different things, the Chamber’s on twenty-five varieties and the Emblem Club’s on the arrangement of five.

The Emblem Club rule is word for word what it was in 1920, 1922 and 1925 — not less than five varieties, most artistic arrangement. Fifteen years after the club gave the cup and three after it disbanded, its terms had not moved.

The numbering is worth a note. This is the “14th annual”, counting from 1914 — the same start the 1925 prize list gives with its “Twelfth Annual” and the 1933 report with its “twentieth annual”. Three years agree. Against them stand the 1939 account dating the first show to 1911 and the 1940 notice calling it the Garden club’s 19th, from 1922. The series appears to have been renumbered as the organising body changed — and the Bulletin of 21 August 1912 already calls the show annual, which rules 1914 out as the beginning of anything.