Garden show promotes Belizean green thumbs
It was postponed due to the threat of bad weather two weeks ago, but organisers say nothing short of a hurricane will stop the Fourteenth Annual Plant and Flower Show this weekend. The gardening showcase has a new venue and theme this year. News Five spoke with two of the club’s most enthusiastic members about the show and the plants and flowers they love most.
Julia Castillo, VP Belize City Garden Club
“Our theme for this year is “Along the Garden Path,” so we are creating a lot of different types of gardens. There is a tranquillity garden, garden with ferns, with palms. We have a lot of caladiums, a lot of local plants, so along the path you will see a lot of different types of plants. We are having a competition on plants, potted plants. There is also a competition on cut specimens and we will have floral arrangements on display. There is also a teaching aspect to the show, because we have the citrus growers who will be giving demonstrations on grafting. Then we also have Supreme Floral arranging and they will have someone trained in floral arranging doing demonstrations on Saturday and on Sunday.”
Phyllis Kelly, Asst Secretary, Bz. City Garden Club
“We get plant enthusiasts, from all over the country we have people coming in. The nurseries responded very well; we will have all the top nurseries there.”
Julia Castillo
“I love roses, so I grow roses. So all these are roses from my garden. I cut them this morning because they won’t last for the show. This is just an assortment of local floribunda roses, and this is I think it is an abutilon, family to the cotton and the hibiscus and to the okra. Phyllis is more into the plants; she knows the names of all the plants. I am more into the arrangements.”
Phyllis Kelly
“We mostly have our shows at Holy Redeemer, but this year we’ve changed to Old Belize. There’s a brand new building there that we will be using and we hope that it will be an exciting time and really good.”
A special shuttle will be running from the gas station near the Pound Yard Bridge to Old Belize for the garden show on both Saturday and Sunday. The first trip leaves on Saturday at eleven a.m. and on Sunday at ten-thirty. Two additional runs will be made on both days at two hour intervals.
