GARDENING FOR SHOWS

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1933, Page 7

GARDENING FOR SHOWS

POPULARITY IN BRITAIN.

PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR SHOWS.

Gardening in England, in spite of the depression, is more popular than ever, according to Mr. G. W. Skellerup, a prominent member of the Canterbury Horticultural Society, who has just returned from a visi tto Europe and the United States of America. Speaking to a Christchurch Times reporter, he said that the development of horticulture in Britain was so much ahead of that in New Zealand that there was always much of interest for the overseas visitor to view. Mr. Skellerup said that of late years the growing of species rather than horticultural varieties was a remarkable development. That applied even to rose culture, and many new species had been sent from trans-Himalaya and territories by the late Mr. George Forrest and Captain Kingdon Ward. Almost every modern garden in Britain aspired to a fairly wide collection of species of Chinese rhododendrons, although some excellent new hybrids had been introduced by leading English and Dutch nurserymen. Flower shows were extremely popular in Britain and their financial importance to the community was being realised. The Southport Corporation, on the west coast of England, spent over £ll,OOO on the show staged at the end of August. Of that amount £6OOO was spent on staging and £5OOO went in prizes. . Every railway station in Britain carried advertising for the show. The Royal Horticultural Society had this year to engage Olympia for its show, and during the three days nearly 60,000 persons paid for admission.

The autumn shows were remarkable for their displays of berry-bearing and autumn-tinted shrubs and Michaelmas daisies. One of the most attractive of the new exhibits was a dwarf variety of Michaelmas daisy raised by Mr. Bowles, of Southampton, who was a member of the War Graves Commission. That variety of daisy grew to a height of from 6in. to Bin„ and was already produced in five or six different shades. The practice of plunge planting, by which potted flowers were alternated in the open beds, kept the London gardens round Hyde Park bright all the summer, continued Mr. Skellerup. A bright bed of lilies in August would be replaced in September by an equally attractive bed of chrysanthemums, the pots in which they grew being covered by the soil of the open beds. Judging by the amount of labour and time spent’ in the London parks, gardening must be considered of much more importance than was attached to it by New Zealand local bodies.