Despite the tough economic climate the 2011 Malvern Spring Gardening Show turned into another winner.

Crowds packed the Three Counties Showground over the four days of the event and tradestands reported good business.

“It has been a very successful show,” said spokesman Sharon Gilbert. “We were a bit apprehensive because we knew these are tough times for everyone, but we are holding our own compared with last year and trade seems to have been good.”

Royal Horticultural Society judges awarded a record 47 gold medals to exhibitors in the floral marquee – proof, Ms Gilbert added, that the standard of what is now the UK’s first major outdoor horticultural show of the summer grows higher every year.

“There is a noticeable shift upwards in the quality of exhibits and this makes us now one of the top horticultural events in the country,” she said.

Herefordshire’s Year in the Orchard initiative was launched at the show.

This aims to celebrate the county’s great orchard tradition by recognising the importance of orchards to the landscape character, getting communities to hold their own orchard-related events and supporting the orchard industry and its economic development.

The year 2011 marks 200 years since the publication of Thomas Andrew Knight’s ground-breaking horticultural work Pomona Herefordiensis.

Knight came from Herefordshire and went on to become president of the RHS, a position that is again being held by a Herefordian this year in Elizabeth Banks of Hergest Croft, Kington, the first woman in the role.