Gael Donaghy’s talk is the only one of the Registrant Lectures to be open to the public. Gael is president of the NZ Native Orchid Group and has lots of photos to share.
Francine Thomas is opening a pop-up shop on Saturday only. Have a look at her wares on the A Floral Affair website.
As you may have realised, I’m helping organise Orchids & More at Mystery Creek Events Centre from September 29-October 1 (Friday-Sunday) – it feels like I’ve been talking about nothing else for a long time!
The show includes displays of flowering orchids from around New Zealand, as well as displays by the Waikato Iris Group and Floral Designers Hamilton.
Vendors are coming from around the top half of the North Island with orchids, houseplants, hoyas, unusual perennials and growing accessories for sale. Our two international guests are bringing flasks of orchids (seedling plants), some of them crosses new to New Zealand. See the flask lists and ordering details here.
And we’re offering a programme of floor talks and demonstrations at no extra charge. Amy Roberts is the owner of Villaleigh Garden and Nursery near Huntly; Chris Thompson is the owner of Bioforce, which sells beneficial insects for pest control; Bill Pepperell is a hugely knowledgeable plant fanatic; Thomas Brown is owner of Kentia Palms in Whangarei; Selwyn Hatrick is an orchid grower from Rotorua who has been using and trialling Fernwood Fibre for some years; and the internationally renowned floral artist Francine Thomas hails from near Tauranga.
The show is open from 10am-4pm (Friday-Saturday) and 10am-3pm (Sunday), entry $10 (under-12 free). There’s plenty of free parking at Mystery Creek and we’ll have food and coffee caravans for sustenance.
Thanks to the help of our funders, we’ve been able to keep the entry charge as low as possible, hoping to make Orchids & More accessible for anyone who loves plants or wants a day out in a space filled with beauty. Grateful thanks to Pub Charity, The Lion Foundation, Waipa District Council and HortiCentre Trust for their support. Sponsors are Daltons, Fernwood NZ, Ninox Orchids, Growing Zone and bioleaf. Friends of Orchids & More are Scott’s Osmcote, Good Local Media and The Waikato Herald.
Brisbane as we know it today may have sprung from a penal colony (nowhere to run if you managed to escape) in 1825, but the city has reinvented itself – is reinventing itself, judging by all the contruction work – with a gloss befitting Australia’s third largest city.
Thankfully, despite all the go-ahead bustle, Brisbane hasn’t neglected to retain or create central city green spaces, the three main ones being the City Botanic Gardens, the South Bank riverside, and the Roma Street Parkland, all within an easy walk, or ferry ride, from the CBD.
The Lawn-mower and I negotiated a pedestrian detour due to construction and found the North Quay ferry jetty to take a free City Hopper (known as Kitty Cats by the locals – the big ferries are City Cats) and tootled up-river as far as the service went and then back down to the Riverside stop, which meant we could enter the City Botanic Gardens at one end and stroll through in a not-very-linear fashion.
From their inception as the penal colony’s first farm in 1828, these splendid gardens are culturally significant as the only place in Queensland to have had a continuous uninterrupted horticultural history for so long. Read more here.
The sculpture Jemmy Morrill and the Brolgas by Queensland artist Lindsay Daen, shows 22-year-old seaman Jemmy Morrill (1824-1865), who was the sole survivor of a shipwreck on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef in 1846. Aboriginal people found him and he lived with them for 17 years before returning to a European settlement and playing an important role in improving relations between the Aboriginal people and early settlers.
Brolgas (Grus rubicunda) are members of the crane family that were once known as ‘the native companion’ and are famed for their elaborate courtship dance. The birds – the males of which stand 1m tall and have a wingspan of 2.4m – are found across tropical northern Australia, throughout Queensland and in parts of western Victoria, central NSW and south-east South Australia. Read more here.
Sandra's Garden 