Flower Show

Even though I don’t currently garden, I like pretty flowers (coz I am a girl) and so went along with my mother and aunt to the Melbourne Flower and Garden Show yesterday. It was a stinking hot day, and we about broke ourselves wandering around in the heat, but it was very lovely overall.

Generally speaking, I didn’t really enjoy the “Arrangements”. Not to crap on those who worked hard on them, but they just weren’t to my taste. A little too much “deep meaning” and not quite enough plant life. I know, I know, it’s art and that’s great and I love that people did it, just not my taste. Having said that there were two I really loved:

I really liked the rose graffiti, for one. The colours are awesome and the booth was laid out really well. The second one I loved was the carnation wheel:

The building was not as busy this year. Last year when Mama and I went it was a day of almost non stop torrential rain, so everyone was inside mostly. This year was totally opposite, the gardens were packed and the hall pretty empty. There were plenty of lovely shady spots to collapse though, which was handy.

The stalls and booths varied from the simple to the complex, with prices to match. One booth which stocked a delicious array of carved sandstone garden sculptures also had prices up to $16,000 so I don’t know how many sales they made on the day.

Gardeners are a generally friendly lot and while wandering alone looking for Mama and Jan (I’d dashed over to the Museum to stock up on postcards while I was in the area) I struck up quite a few conversations with people as we wandered the pathways. Conversations about flower colours, prices and delicious furniture, as well as offering directions and suggestions. Everyone was there for a good day, and the cheerfulness of the crowd was pretty infectious.

The Collectors Stand was probably the busiest. They were selling cuttings for cheap, for one, and for 2 (grammar be damned) they had a wonderful collection of cacti, air plants and other weird and wonderful plants.

I picked up four air plants (one of which is stuck to a frog ornament, there’s a shock) and a Dead Elephant Plant*. The airplants, which I’ve always loved, will be mounted this weekend. Mama availed herself to the cheap cuttings (seriously, some people were buying up huge amounts).

The Growers section was back again this year, giving us so much beauty and colour.

Just deliciousness. You can see a few more shots (including the garden chairs someone needs to buy me please) over at my Flickr Set of the show.

*If you go to your local nursery and ask for a Dead Elephant Plant they will think you’re a lunatic. What you need to ask for is a Stone Plant. Mama and I call them Dead Elephant Plants because when I was a mere slip of a girl we had one that looked like someone had buried a dead elephant with its feet sticking up out of the ground.