GOLDEN FIELDS

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1930, Page 3

GOLDEN FIELDS

AMONG THE DAFFODILS

VISIT r IU O'iATI.UNA. CHR ISTCHURCH, September 22. Nestling at the foot of the sheltering hills, and bordering on the niinature lake in front of Sir Heaton Rhodes' beautiful home at Otnhuna, the fields are a glowing, living breeze of gold and cream, untold thousands of daffodils breaking from their winter retirement and opening their fluted trumpets. At the side of the house, in the special nursery where the experimental flowers are grown, are thousandagain, while at the hack of the house, on the hillside, is another patch where all manner of new and strange seedlings make their first appearance.

About 100 members and friends of the Workers’ Educational Association made their annual trip to Otahuna on Saturday afternoon, and spent three delightful hours wandering through the spacious grounds and admiring the golden show. Arrangements had been made to provide afternoon tea, and shortly after four o’clock the party broke up into groups and picnicked. Owing to the late season, the full rush of the blooms has not yet come along, but the showing on Saturday was magnificent. To those who are not specialists the size and colour of the: display was a revelation, but to the specialists the plants in the special nursery were of sufficient interest to hold them until the last moment.

Although the flowers are known by two names—daffodils ' and jonquils—they all belong to the one family, the narcissi. Growing in masses in tinopen as they do at Otaliuna, the Golden Trumpets made the most impressive showing by virtue of the fact that the deep richness of their colour overwhelmed the more delicate colour scheme of the others.

Coining to a close examination, however, the double markings of the bicolours which have the rich gold trumpet in the centre, and the delicate cream of the main petals, marked them in a class alone, while for decorations they are hard to rival. Then there are those with orange trumpets, and one main variety, named from the war, which seemed to carry in its blooms something of the saffron flash of the big guns. Counting the unnamed seedlings, there are 1000 varieties on tin; property, many of which have been bred on the place. When it is remembered that the gardener has to wait four years after crossing two varieties before be can see the resultant bloom and as that it is only one out of dozens so treated they may give even tin slightest promise, it is no wonder that prices running up to £SO are paid for single bulbs. Upon the hillside at the hack of tlr house, the bees do some remarkable work, and in the workshop where the head gardener, Mr A. Wilson, hides his secrets some remarkable blooms were to be seen. Some of them were doubles and one, a flower of remarkable size.

Among the main varieties now flowering, in addition to those already mentioned, are the White Trumpets, the Incoms, which have a shorter cup, and Leedsii. Those that will be coming out from now on include Poeticus and Triandus, which are the last te flower.

Seeing the mass off blooms all together in the open, it is difficult to realise that they are much different from-those to be seen in the gardens around the suburbs. Tt is only when some of the blooms are placed alongside those of the amateur gardener that the realisation is brought horn • that the smallest of the Otaliuna blooms is a giant by comparison.