Lots to see Down The Garden Path

The highly creative members of the Ladies' Supper Club at Christchurch Methodist Church can always be relied on to produce a novel theme for their annual three-day Festival of Flowers.

The weather was the customary damp Bank Holiday curtain-raiser as the festival opened on Saturday. But visitors thronging the church found it a festival of floral colour.

The inspired idea which sees the Supper Club ladies use the Lord's loveliest gifts to do His work saw ingenuity and skill combined in aid this year of two charities.

Mercy Ships provide a mobile, stable, environment from which to offer specialised surgery otherwise unavailable in developing countries.

The British Heart Foundation is raising funds towards the Conquest Hospital Echo appeal to provide a portable echo-cardiograph machine.

This year's festival theme was Down The Garden Path.

A wrought iron gate with the legend "Welcome to my garden" greeted visitors. Pink roses and carnations, blue delphiniums, lilac and alstroemeria were woven into a design featuring the sale of free-range eggs.

A horizontal design featuring a barbecue grill, glasses and fruit offset by white roses illustrated The Patio.

Knitting, a cup-and-saucer gave a homely feel to Granny's Arbour, with its pink and mauve theme in carnations and roses offset by gypsophila and eucalyptus.

The sun had certainly got his hat on for The Garden Seat, an item of furniture with wide-brimmed hat, book and sun-glasses at the ready set in a blaze of sunflowers and gladioli in red, orange and yellow.

A veritable cornucopia of produce graced The Vegetable patch. Trug basket and garden sieve were brimming with radishes and cauliflower heads, beans climbed a wigwam and corn cobs peeked from floral displays of white, yellow and cream.

In The Shed (Dad's Haven) flanked by two conical complementary floral displays were sacks of fertilizer, potatoes and silver sand. Dad's gardening cap hung on a nail.

Overlooking the scene were The Tools For The Job '“ fork and spade adorned with their own floral arrangements.

As usual, the ends of the church pews featured miniature arrangements. This year's theme was sunflowers overlooked by hanging baskets of blooms.

Appropriately, One Is Nearer God's Heart In A Garden was located before the Lord's table. A simple but effective design, red roses and alstroemeria were offset by ferns and cordyline.

Beside it was The Water Feature, making inspired use of balls in a transparent column to give a bubbles effect in a design featuring white gladioli and gypsophila with eucalyptus foliage.

The step below became Mother's Favourite Border, thanks to a low horizontal creation featuring white roses amid ferns.

An antique pump dominated The Pond with its rocks, its white lilies, its iris and lisianthus and its effective droplets of "water" cascading from the central pool.

Bright red robin breasts brought A Place For Our Feathered Friends to life. Bid table, nest and inhabitants were in a bower including laurel and lilac, golden rod and Chinese lanterns.

Slide, seesaw and hoop showed Where Children Play with green and yellow balls spiralling up a church pillar and gladioli, alstermeria and carnations complementing fun with beauty.

Above the clavinova on which a succession of musicians added to visitors' enjoyment of the festival was Over The Hedge, a green horizontal design from which miniature conifers poked in competition with carnations and chrysanthemums.

With refreshments in the hall, lunches and teas available plus plants and other goods on stalls, the festival was the complete Bank Holiday pleasure package.