Having been participants in other garden shows nearby, The members of the Wareham Garden Club were excited to host their own Small Flower Show on May 12 in St. Patrick’s Hall.

The show took two years to organize, during which time Garden Club members Barbara Deagan and Yvonne Capella conducted workshops for members to develop their flower arranging skills.

“We have a lot of new members who have never exhibited before,” said Kathleen Coyle, the club’s general chairman.

She explained the rules for the show are based on a national standard, and so is the judging process. The first place winners had to score 90 points or more based on the standard, not just in scale with their competitors.

At this flower show, division one had five sections that included 25 classes of flowers. These included container-grown plants, evergreen branches, flowering branches, bulbs, and perennials. Division two had four classes: table designs, small designs, traditional mass designs, and designs staged on a pedestal.

The judges were invited from other clubs on Cape Cod.

Diane Cook, first place winner of the table set-up, said it took her two hours to prep her design and one hour to put it together. She collected her flowers and plants from the Boston Flower Exchange. She joined the club last year. This was her first flower show competition.

“You can’t just let them grow out in the garden,” she said, explaining how arranging flowers is part of a gardener’s natural evolution.

Common flowering weeds were crucial in her display as she kept in mind some wisdom from George Washington Carver, who was a gardener and planter: “A weed is just a flower in the wrong place.”