LICS SHOW REPORT 2025

The Long Island Chrysanthemum Society held its 70th (annual if you don’t count the Covid disruption) Show on November 2nd and 3rd, 2025 at Starkie Bros. Garden Center in Farmingdale, NY.  We had 11 exhibitors and 177 entries.  Two teams of judges, mostly from out of state, spent 3 hours judges the entries, while a team of judges from Long Island reviewed the judges’ entries.

Planning for the 70th Long Island Chrysanthemum Show began months before with the Show Committee opting for 1 cultivar per exhibitor and looking for ways to commemorate the society.  A People’s Choice Award was established for the best exhibit commemorating the club, along with a couple Presidential Challenges.  The commemorative exhibit was unlimited in materials only limited in size.  An invitation was sent to all club members and the local garden clubs, yet there was only 1 exhibit.  

The club’s president, John Capobianco , issued three $50 gift certificates to be won by the People’s Choice Award winner and 2 other challenges.  The Best Hanging Basket entry and the Best Organically Grown entry were to receive the gift certificates.  There were no hanging baskets entered in the show and only 1 organically grown entry.  While the club’s Vice President, Bob Tobias said that everything he grows is grown organically he didn’t put any entries in that section of the show.  John Capobianco entered a containers of Soul Sister, so he took back the gift certificate.

When you walked into the show you were greeted by a 4’ wide fan of Hime go koromo created by Rita Rover.  Opposite it was a exhibit commemorating the 70th show with 2 red single seedlings trained into the number 7 and 0, surrounded by a number of container grown disbuds and spray and an easle with pictures from shows past.  Joan Corbisiero knew the late member that had taken the photos and donated them to the LICS archive.

The talk of the show were the bonsai as per usual.  We heard all the comments, “These are bonsai?”, “I didn’t know you could make bonsai with mums.”, “It looks like a forest that I could walk in.”, “How old are these?”, “How long does it take to make them?”  Frank Kondrich’s work pleased the judges as his each of his 5 entries earned blue ribbons.  Frank is a member of the Bonsai Society of Greater New York, Inc. and applied his knowledge of woody bonsai (pines, maples, bougainvillea, ficus) to cultivars and make some outstanding entries.

You are already saw the best bloom in the show on the front cover of the December 2025 issue.  It was a 10” wide single cut stem of the cultivar Inferno.  

Another section of the show that drew attention and commanded much work for the judges was the seedling section.  The section was divided in to 2 parts with 1 sub part.  There was the K2a section for seedlings grown by someone other than the hybridizer, K1a for the hybridizer and K1b for 2nd and 3rd entries by the hybridizer.  The K1b subsection is elibigle for the newly created Bowersox Seedling and Sport Award, which comes with a $250 cash prize availabe for each local show.  Again, Frank Kondrich stood out with his seedling entries, each on receiving a blue ribbon.  Those seedlings are being wintered over and will be tested next year to see how they respond to bonsai and cascade training techniques.  In the K1b section , John Capobianco had a number  of seedlings that he has been working with since 2020. 

{Possible sidebar article here:  When Brian Kanotz purchased King’s Mums he kept the same inventory until the International Royalty Association told him that he had to destroy certain cultivars.  Among those that were removed from the catalog was Artist Pink.  John Capobianco has been on a quest to find an Artist Pink substitute since then.}

One of the fun things about growing a variety open centered cultivars is the abundance of seeds to be collected and the seedlings to be found popping up in the greenhouse.  In February of 2020 John collected seeds from his Artist Pink that had been open pollinated by the local bees and flies.  One of those seedlings, 2020AP#11, stood out for its erect growth habit and its unusual florets.  The florets  were spatulate and bicolored purple and white spoons, but didn’t meet the NCS definition of a spoon because the florets emerge at a 45 degree angle to the stem.  The NCS definition of a spoon says that the florets should emerge at a 90 degreee angle to the stem.  This seedling having been entered the year before at the New Jersery show was eligible for the Bowersox Seedling and Sport Award, which the judges awarded to the entry.  This seedling has now been named after Sid Simon and will be available exclusively through Oregon Chrysanthemums and Hostas while John persues a plant pantent for the cultivar.  Those of you that have been in the society long enough will remember Sid as the preeminent spray grower in NCS and his articles in The Chrysanthemum on spray culture.  If you aren’t familiar with Sid’s entries in shows from years past, you see his work on the NCS website, those line drawings of the bloom classes were created by Sid and donated to NCS.  

Every year Ivor Mace provides LICS with 2 medals for the Ivor Mace International Affiliates awards, a bronze and silver medallion to be awarded for service to the club.  This year the club presented Bob Tobias with the Bronze Medal for his service to the club.  He is the club Vice President, Membership Secretary, and Database Coordinator and the President’s righhand man.  The club awarded the silver medallion of George “Butch” Starkie for his support to LICS and the show.   Starkie Bros Garden center had been hosting our show since 2018, if not earlier, free of charge.  His staff rearranges their Pottery Shed to host the show (which is why you see all those containers in the background) and his staff comes to visit and clean up after us.  When he hosted our first show there, his office manager said to him, “That’s nice, but will they come back?”  Butch said to her, “You don’t have to worry about growers like these, they’ll be back.” And we have and are exceedingly grateful for the hospitality of his staff.  They seem to enjoy the show as much as the public, and we keep trying to entice them to grow.

They trophy winners are almost a repeat of the 69th Annual show, only a few names of cultivars have changed.

The NCS Silver Medal Certificate for Sweepstakes was awarded to John Capobianco, with 134 points.  Bob Tobias was runner-up in sweepstakes with 106 points. 

The NCS Bronze Medal Certificates were awarded as follows:

Best Container-Grown in Show, John Capobianco, Artistically Trained to wood, ‘Estelle Abrams’

Best NCS Terminal Spray in Show, John Capobianco, ‘Yellow Vesuvio’

Best Disbud in Show, Rita Rover/Marty Cohen, ‘Inferno’ 

Best Multiple Disbuds in Show, John Finocchio, ‘Senkyo Kenshin’

Trophies were awarded to:

Best Disbud, Section A, Rita Rover/Marty Cohen, ‘Inferno’

Best Incurve, Rita Rover/Marty Cohen, ‘Luxor’

Best Reflex, Rita Rover/Marty Cohen, ‘Inferno’

Best Single/Anemone/Spoon, Bob Tobias, ‘Alabama’

Best Quill/Spider, John Finocchio, ‘Senkyo Kenshin’

Best Three-Bloom entry, Section B, John Finocchio, ‘Senkyo Kenshin’

Best New Introduction, Camilla Ng, ‘Lotus Lantern’

Best Judges Entry, Chuck Blewett, ‘Flair’ (Disbud) 

Best Container-Grown Disbud/Spray John Finocchio – ‘Luxor’

Best Bonsai, John Capobianco, Slab planting of ‘Tsukomo & Joan Corbisiero’

Best Container-Grown Tree, Bush or Artistically Grown, John Capobianco, Trained to Wood ‘Estelle Abrams’

Best Youth (Section H) ………………………………………...Nathaniel Gjeluci, Spider entry of ‘Fire Wheel

Ivor Mace Affiliated Societies Bronze Medal, Bob Tobias for service to the club

Ivor Mace Affiliated Societies Silver Medal, George ‘Butch’ Starkie for supporting LICS  

Chrysanthemum Bonsai in the show

LICS SHOW REPORT 2023

  The Long Island Chrysanthemum Society held its 68th Annual Show at Starkie Bros Garden Center in Farmingdale, Long Island, NY on Saturday and Sunday, October 28nd and 29rd 2023. 

Throughout the course of the year John Capobianco and Rita Rover delivered a number of lectures to garden clubs and John hosted a series of Beginner Grower Workshops in coordination with Village of Farmingdale’s Cultural Arts Committee.  While a lot of the participants from the workshops didn’t have their blooms in time for the show, they were happy to have blooms for their Thanksgiving table.

With many of our growers having retired from active mum cultivation we were again anxious about the size of our show.  We shouldn’t have been, we had 9 exhibitors with 94 entries. 

John Finocchio, one of our newest members, dazzled the veteran growers with his Novice entries.  He had 5 entries in the Novice section and received 5 blue ribbons.  The judges didn’t cut him any slack for being a novice and his hard work paid off as he received the Novice Sweepstakes award, which requires a minimum of 3 blue ribbons, He also won the inaugural Bowersox Trust Award of $100.00.

The NCS Silver Medal Certificate for Sweepstakes was awarded to John Capobianco, with 135 points.  Rita Rover was runner-up in sweepstakes.

The NCS Bronze Medal Certificates were awarded as follows:

John Capobianco was awarded Best Container-Grown in Show, Trained to wood, ‘Joan Corbisiero’ and ‘Kotoi No Kaori’, Best NCS Terminal Spray in Show, ‘Yellow Vesuvio’ , Rita Rover/Marty Cohen received Best Disbud in Show, ‘Louisiana’,

Best Multiple Disbuds in Show for 2 ‘Louisiana’ and 1‘Cream Jesse Habgood’

The trophy winners were:

Rita Rover/Marty Cohen received the awards for: Best Disbud in Show, ‘Louisiana’

Best Multiple Disbuds in Show, for 2 ‘Louisiana’ and 1‘Cream Jesse Habgood’

Best Disbud, Section A,  ‘Louisiana’, Best Incurve, Rita ‘Rita Rover’, Best Reflex, ‘Louisiana’, Best Quill/Spider, ‘Coral Reef’, Best Three-Bloom entry, Section B, ‘Louisiana’ and ‘Cream Jessie Habgood’

John Capobianco received the trophy for Best Container-Grown Tree, Bush or Artistically Grown, Trained to wood, ‘Joan Corbisiero’ and ‘Kotoi No Kaori’

and Best Single/Anemone/Spoon, ‘Edith Mechen’, Best Bonsai, Tanuki style (Phoenix Graft) for ‘Joan Corbisiero’

Steve Avallone received the trophy for  Best Judges Entry, ‘Crimson Tide’ (Disbud)

Rita Rover presented the Ivor Mace Affiliated Societies Bronze Medal to our Vice President, Bob Tobias for his efforts this year as Membership Chairman and for contributing his hard work and many blooms for our Chapter Show this year. 

Rita also presented the Ivor Mace Affiliated Societies Silver Medal to John Capobianco for all his work this year to make the LICS show a success. 

LICS SHOW REPORT 2021

   The 66th Annual* Long Island Chrysanthemum Show was held, Saturday October 23rd and 24th, 2021 at Starkie Bros. Garden Center in Farmingdale, New York. Our year started out fairly normally (whatever that means in the days of Covid-19) with our annual elections and planning for the show. However, our President Joel Simon resigned, for personal reasons, shortly after securing our show dates.  The members of LICS would like to thank Joel for his service to LICS for a decade as President.

   Our growers had the usual concerns about the weather, insects and having blooms in time for the show. Some of our regular growers were unable to bring their usual complement of blooms, but we managed to pull off a decent display. We had 7 exhibitors with 94 entries, but that doesn’t begin to count the number of blooms that were in the Educational and Display exhibits.

   Camilla Ng, of the Old Dominion Chrysanthemum Society, drove 5 hours with her blooms and a friend to spend the weekend with us. She was in search of blue ribbons for her candidate judging requirements. Not only did she earn blue ribbons, but she walked away with – Best in Show, for her cut disbud of Icicles.

   As usual Rita Rover wowed everyone with her giant English Mums. 

   Chuck Turner came from New Jersey with judges Steve Avallone and Chuck Blewett in his hunt for blue ribbons as he meets the requirements to take the Candidate Judge exam. 

   Donna Rusinski, one of our newer members, received the Ivor Mace Affiliates Silver Medal Award for her patient work putting together our new website, check it out (www.limums.org).

   John Capobianco – received the Ivor Mace Affiliates, Bronze Medal Award for service to LICS for pulling the show together.

   John Capobianco walked away with an embarrassment of NCS Medal Certificates, he received the NCS Gold Medal Certificate for his display of cut and container grown disbuds, the Silver Medal Certificate for his Educational Exhibit, “Why no ribbon?” an explanation of what the judges are looking for in a bloom and why that bloom didn’t measure up, the other Silver Medal Certificate for Sweepstakes (104 points), and the Bronze Medal Certificate for his NCS Terminal Spray, “Helen Brandt”, many were disappointed that he didn’t display any bonsai this year.

   The Long Island Chrysanthemum Society Trophy winners were:

   Best Disbud, Section A, Camilla Ng, ‘Icicles’, Best Incurve, John Capobianco, ‘Quan Yon Hung’,

   Best Decorative, Renu Sharma, ‘Seaton’s J’adore’,Best Single/Anemone/Spoon, Camilla Ng, ‘Fire Wheel’ , Best Quill/Spider.... Renu Sharma, ‘Judith Baker’, Best Three-Bloom entry, Section J, Camilla Ng, ‘Delano Red’, Best NCS Terminal Spray, Section C, John Capobianco, ‘Helen Brandt’, Best Judges Entry, Camilla Ng, Disbud ‘Icicles’, Best Container-Grown Tree, Bush or Artistically Grown, Steve Avallone, ‘Hatsune’ (Hanging Basket)

*Technically not annual because the 2020 show was cancelled due to concerns about Covid-19.