COLOURED BOMBS OF FLOWER-LAND

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 83, 2 January 1930, Page 15

COLOURED BOMBS OF FLOWER-LAND

GLORIES OF THE BEGONIA HOUSE OVER THIRTY VARIETIES IN FLOWER (By E.A.A.) The Begonia House in the Botanical Gardens was thrown open to the public on Christmas Day. Already large crowds have visited the place and paid their homage to the clash of colour within. It is well worth a visit. There are at least seventy varieties of begonias in this greenhouse, and over thirty varieties are now in Hower. In the fifty-foot-long greenhouse, begonias of every shade, size, and shape spread their cascades of colour with the mail artistry of disintegrated rainbows. Along the floor runs a line of purples and reds of “Impatience,” outcasts of this exclusive spot, Haunting their less strident hues to the begonias above. Man-Guided Nature. Right down the centre hanging bombs of colour splash their yellows and reds ou to your head with the lavishness of um-gulded nature. Yellow “Gohlen .Shower” droop sleepily from their baskets, and, if you look carefully demure female Howers may be seen hidden here and there amongst the full rich rosettes of the male Howers. Here and there vivid red Daves! stab the orderly rows of hanging magic with the fiery redness of embers fanned once more to life. > On the benches below serried ranks of sedate matrons of this begonia world spin their colour trickeries with heavy thick-set kaleidoscope effects. Hair bells are fairy things but begonias, though beautiful, are heavier, more worldly. Their beauty is the glaring voluptuous beauty so loved in the East —it fills the place with a thick syrupy atmosphere that overwhelms by siieer force. Daintiness gives place to sheer domineering personality. The Whole Range of the Colour Scale. The colour scale is full to overcrowding. “Lord Lamborne” crimson and tending to orange vies with myriad hues right through the colour scale to demure -whites and creams. Reds and yellows jostle for attention. On the left as you enter, in a sea of rippling colour, stands “Lady Rhondda,” pink and breathless with the weight of her huge seven-and.-a-half-inch rosetted petals—but not dainty. The artist who made her has overdone those huge frilled pink blooms. However, at the moment she dominates the scene, and you can almost feel her saying: “Look at me—there may be others daintier — but I’m the biggest!” One may wear pearls as big as pigeon eggs, but sometimes smallness is exquisitely allusive. More to Follow. But this tumult of colour is by no means spent. Right into March new varieties, new colours, new begonias will burst into this world, magically taking colour from no more but the drab earth in which they grow. Many new varieties never yet exhibited in this Dominion arc due to spread their colour snares early in the New Year. When the old matrons die Ethel Shciferdeeker —God help her! — in her old dress of old rose will be there to greet yon. Or the golden yellows of Mrs. Rushton will disclose their attractions for the first time in New Zealand. Pavlova, Mary Newman with her deep apricot frills, Madame Sara Grand, and a host of other beauties are not far around the corner of the season. They wait the sun to call them to their destiny so that you may see the magic of it all.

For a while they will strut and swagger on their greenhouse stage, forgetful of those who came before. Their destiny of colour fulfilled, they too will wither—old age makes even begonias very much alike. Only in youth is their change and sparkle and restlessness —so the world goes on in the greenhouse.