CANTERBURY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY SUMMER EXHIBITION

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30062, 21 February 1963, Page 9

CANTERBURY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY SUMMER EXHIBITION

The Biggest Show

After judging yesterday, the Canterbury Horticultural Society’s summer exhibition will continue today and tomorrow. This biennial show in Hagley Park, near the Armagh street gates, also celebrates the hundredth year of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

FIRST of all, there was big-top bustle and urgency. Canvas of two dozen tents clattered in the wind, trucks tipped 20 loads of sawdust, vans stuffed with gear emptied out a jumble of timber and paper, and electricians laced high wires across the fiveacre lots for the night lights. Master of the preparations, the society’s secretary, Mr J. C. Fraser, paced the lot with an armful of plans for all the world like a circus boss with a sheaf of bills. Yesterday, the public came to see the show, the biggest horticultural show ever staged in New Zealand or even, perhaps, Australia. It was judging and openmg day when hundreds of exhibitors reached the climax of months of preparation and produced a brilliant show of flowers, vegetables, trees, shrubs, garden equipment and competitive horticulture. The Christchurch Botanic Gardens have been planning their massive exhibit of shrubs, rock gardens and pools for a whole year. They have moved in tons of rock, scores of small trees and even a 20ft birch for their display. Fiftythree garden clubs from all over the province and individual guest decorators have packed a huge marquee with their flower arrangements for a monster, non-competitive show. The women’s decorative committee of the society have been to the Canterbury Museum to learn how to make artificial rocks as they could not handle real ones to build a serene and leafy Oriental garden. Seven women brought the Dunedin Horticultural, Society’s under-water scene to the show, and just before the show opened the Australian plant exhibit from the Adelaide Botanic Gardens came through the customs and health checks. From the mountains have come a great variety of native plants. National Park rangers at Arthur’s Pass have brought down samples of the country’s mountain flora and are giving a simple lesson in how to identify New Zealand’s commonest trees, to distinguish the five native beeches, and to remind us all that none of these belong to the birch family as is often supposed to be the case. The latest of the mountain flowers, the prim little white gentian, blooms in their unexpectedly various and colourful display of bog plants from the hills. From the tussock lands, the botany division of the D.S.I.R. has selected native grasses that could ornament a town garden. These samples were in fact grown at Lincoln. There is the red-stemmed tussock, not at this time of the year showing its brightest colour, and the broad-bladed Danthonia cunninghamii with its feathery flower head. These perhaps are the most attractive of the grasses covering hillocks near the fountain playing in ' Victoria Lake. But there are 20 other varieties, too. From the mountains of New Zealand and other countries, the Canterbury Alpine Garden Society has collected a range of high-altitude

plants that now brighten members’ gardens with their small, bright blooms. Crisis! The South Island Dahlia Show was expected to produce only 600 vases of blooms. In fact 900 have arrived. Somehow, Mr Fraser has found room for the vast competition in his already crowded arena. The aristocrats of the ' flower garden, the lilies, loft their gay and haughty heads in the elegant, ornate garden built by the New Zealand Lily Society in Edwardian style. February is always a difficult month for the Rose Society. But if the 200 potted bushes in its formal garden could not burst forth with sufficient blooms this week the exhibit is nevertheless an explosion of colour. Dozens of blooms to match the 90-odd varieties have been cunningly wired to the plants, each . sustained by a balloon of wader hanging under the stems.

For city planners, the Christchurch Beautifying Society has a model of street furniture decorated with tubbed plants and a tree-like lamp standard. For the vegetable growers and admirers of precision arrangements, the Canterbury Tomato, Stone Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association has arranged a tableau of “good, average quality” vegetables collected from two dozen market gardens. Nurserymen, horticultural societies, and a host of institutions and clubs offer exhibits of ferns, garden ponds, machinery, cacti and succulents—an exhaustive survey of gardening and decorating. Country women have arranged a tent of competitive floral and produce exhibits. “The promotion, encouragement and advancement of horticulture in all its branches” is the object of the society. In this huge show it has succeeded to the certain pleasure of all who see it.