Flower festival attracts 1,000 visitors

CATHEDRAL "stained glass," a cricket scoreboard and Concorde's distinctive silhouette were among the diverse images adorning Christchurch Methodist Church over the Bank Holiday weekend.

But they were as nothing compared with the beauty of some of Creation's loveliest triumphs for this was the annual Festival of Flowers.

Once again, months of planning and preparation by members of the Ladies' Supper Club had produced stunning results, enjoyed by more than 1,000 visitors. The result was not only a delight to the eye. The festival had the power to enthrall and to amuse.

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The theme was A Grand Day Out. Fourteen highly individualistic set-piece displays plus pew-end miniatures which were works of art in themselves, took the visitor from stately homes via Wimbledon's Centre Court, horse and airshows to the seaside.

This triumph of ingenuity and artistry reached its climax with A Visit To A Cathedral.

A Grand Day Out drew out the Bank Holiday crowds, more than 300 passing through in the first four hours alone.

Curtain material, chairs, embroidery and a candlestick were tastefully worked into Stately Home, which featured roses, alstromeria and spray carnations.

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"London pride has been handed down to us" - Noel Coward's words were encompassed with a sentry box bursting with scarlet roses and carnations. Beneath it, of course, were sprays of london pride.

Summer was captured in the colours beneath A Trip On The River's parasol.

Vita Sackville-West's words complemented A Visit To A Garden with its pyramid display, sundial and tubbed bays.

Simplicity was the essence of this year's festival. A net flanked by opposing "players" of white blooms with a blue centrepiece of lisianthus evoked Wimbledon.

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Draped for the occasion, a church pillar was transformed into a feature of a Roman villa complete with heroic bust and elegant white columns. Orange and cream roses, carnations, lisianthus, alstromeria and gladioli cleverly reflected the colours of the "mosaic" floor.

A seated spaniel guarded Dog Show with its twin tubs barking with floral colour.

That test match scoreboard had pride of place against the church's glass screen atop a "pitch" of green and white chrysanthemums, lilies, gladioli, lisianthus and stocks.

Highly topical in Bexhill on Spring Bank Holiday, Horse Show was simplicity itself, a red and white arrangement picking out the timbers of the jump and floral rosettes echoing those awaiting first, second and third.

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Sprays of floral colour brought three-dimensional beauty bursting out of Art Gallery's picture frames and dripping from its easel.

Shingle and shells at the visitor's feet led the eye past a drift-wood groyne to a red and pink carnation punch-and-judy show in A Day At The Seaside - where the brass bands played...

Soaring away in a corner was a tiered floral arrangement with biplane wings below progressing to Concorde's dart-like form at the pinnacle.

The Cathedral finale was both a reminder that this festival was in a place of worship and that it had a serious purpose besides the immediate and entirely laudable cause of giving a great many Grand Day Out visitors much pleasure.

The festival raised 2,300 for the Gateway Club of Bexhill, the Motor Neurone Association and Hurstwood Park Neurological Centre, Haywards Heath.

JD

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