ARS News

Ideas to Use

New Members

Whether prospective new members have found your society or you have found them, it is important to make them feel welcome and comfortable during their initial visit, especially if they don’t know anyone in your society. Here are a few suggestions to consider:

• When guests arrive at your meeting, have them fill out a form that will entitle them to receive several issues of your newsletter. Also have extra copies of the local society brochure and recent newsletters available at the sign-in table.
• Assign a designated seasoned member (or CR) to “adopt” a guest upon arrival. This greeter will invite the guest to sit with them, introduces the guest to other club members and answer questions regarding the club.
• Permanent name badges for your members should have the person’s first name printed as large as possible. It should be able to be read from across the room!
• You can identify newer members by adding an extra colored sheet covering the permanent badge, perhaps in green. Members know that the “greenies” are not to be left sitting alone. At the beginning of the meeting, after the guests are introduced, recognize the “greenies” by having them stand. When the new member feels comfortable enough (or is tired of being embarrassed by being asked to stand at every meeting), they will remove the green paper and reveal the permanent badge beneath.

Guidelines, Rules
for Judging Roses

Guidelines and Rules for Judging Roses has been revised – all the changes approved by the Board of Directors since 2003 have been placed in the new Guidelines. You can order a copy from the ARS Store on the web site at:(click here).

The new Guidelines, with the red binder cover is $15. Just the pages (you put them into your own binder cover) are $10. Shipping and handling is also charged.

(Editor’ s note: If you are interested in exhibiting or if you are involved in putting on your local rose show, the Guidelines and Rules for Judging Roses will be very helpful. Your society should have a copy for reference.)

ARS President’s Message

The American Rose Society has always supported rose exhibiting. We will continue to do so as rose shows are one of our prime tools to educate our members, non-members and the public. Seeing a wide array of rose varieties at their peak of cultural perfection at a rose show got many of us started in the hobby. Despite the fact that the majority of our members do not exhibit, we remain convinced of the importance of our competitive rose shows.

Some years ago, in response to a membership survey, the ARS decided to de-emphasize exhibiting information in the American Rose magazine and instead concentrate it in a new quarterly publication. In order not to favor only the exhibitors, the Mini Quarterly and The Arrangement Quarterly were also established at that time. This has remained a viable approach for these specific aspects of our hobby. Of late, the Rose Exhibitors’ Forum (which will be renamed “Exhibitors Quarterly”) experienced a noticeable hiatus, with no new issues coming out in over a year. In response to this, it was decided to take this publication in a new direction, one that would take advantage of our online ability to display a large number of color images of roses in the publication. It was also decided to forego reporting local show results in order to concentrate on District and National rose shows. We will continue with articles from exhibitors around the country, as well as other information specifically related to rose exhibiting.

I’m very happy to welcome Louise Coleman as the new editor of the ARS Exhibitors’ Quarterly. Louise’s long and outstanding service to the American Rose Society was recognized when she was awarded the ARS Gold Honor Medal in 2003. We are fortunate to have her returning to a publication she initiated and edited in the past.

The new format for the Exhibitors’ Quarterly will be a combination of a web site blog and a direct quarterly mailing to interested ARS members. The ARS web site will contain sign-up information for those members who want the EQ e-mailed directly to them on a quarterly basis. In addition, they will be notified when new material appears on the EQ site. This arrangement was necessitated by the limited file size that can be sent directly, while there is no limit for material, both text and images, appearing on the web blog.

The ARS web site will also include a form for Districts to report their show results, as well as information on submitting digital images of District Show winners. As mentioned, we want to feature images of winning exhibits, so please be sure to provide photos of winning exhibits from your District show.

I’m looking forward to the first edition of the new Exhibitors’ Quarterly, and again my thanks to Louise Coleman and to ARS staff for their work on this groundbreaking approach to our quarterly bulletins and our continuing commitment to rose exhibiting.