Yesterday was a windy, rainy day. The waves on the Lake were significant. I'd reserved my spot for the Hamilton Chrysanthemum Show at Gage Park. So I drove off through the sheets of rain and wind towards Hamilton.
And it was worth it.
Niagara grows millions of pots of garden mums for the outdoor display garden this time of year. These are mostly hardy mums. But there are even more than the myriad of colours and shapes in our gardens. Check out a flower competition and one can see how they organize by bloom type and shape.
We got to see all the types in an exhibition format. Beautifully grown flowers - big pompom varieties, spider and thistle, spoon, anemone and the regular sorts of single and semi-double. And then there were displays with mosaic culture art around themes to give drama to the experience. There was 20,000 square feet of displays, themed around past years so the overall show was a Trip Down Memory Lane.
There were 200 varieties on display, plus hundreds of varieties of companion plants to make the display interesting and entertaining.
How does that compare with Longwood Gardens' display? It claims to be the biggest Thousand Flower Tree outside of Asia with more than a thousand flowers each year on a single-stem plant. It is a beautiful display with an amazing grand conservatory setting.
You would guess that other festivals in Asia are larger. Korea has the Dream Park Chrysanthemum Festival. It is outside in a 860,000 square meter space. That's massive.
There are numerous festivals in China. Kaifeng Chrysanthemum Festival in China is a month long. It has over 1.6 million pots on display.
Japan too has numerous festivals with one of the festivals over 100 years old. Asian countries have a particular fondness and love of Chrysanthemums.
One of the things that is so lovely is that we humans mark our opening and closing garden seasons with flowers - the beautiful Cherry Blossom and Bulb Festivals announce Spring, and Chrysanthemums close off the Fall. Maybe we mark every season with flowers - Christmas has its decorated trees and Poinsettias. And the winter? The exotic Orchid Festivals.
And add to the fun - somehow, it is Train Day everywhere you go - flower festivals included!
No comments:
Post a Comment