HARVEST IN SPALDING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4839, 8 June 1925, Page 3

HARVEST IN SPALDING.

RICH GOLDEN FIELDS. LIVING ON FLOWERS GROWN. Ten pleasant-faced country girls sit in a warm shadowed shed. Their hands are full of golden daffodils. The rough deal table is piled with baskets of golden daffodils (writes a correspondent of the London Daily News). The shadowed corners of the shed are filled with zinc pails, all crowned witli golden daffodils. The (shilling beauty of the thousands of golden trumpets fills the gloom with a glamorous haze. For this is the* Easter time ofthe golden harvest in Spalding. Each girl ties a bunch of 12 blooms a minute. An eight-hour day accounts for some 50,000 blooms in this one shed alone. . There are 200 growers in the Spalding district. Here is a pretty sum in golden multiplication, the fabulous wealth of the’ daffodil fields piled in heapp of

golden bloom. Indeed, this whole district seems sprinkled with fairy gold. There are daffodils in every little garden, in every window, in the fields, in the shops, on the hotel tables. LAND OF ROMANCE. Everywhere the fragile golden beauty is repeated, until one realises that this town lives by flowers. It seems to me, as a mere town drudge, that this must be the very land of romance. The calendar of Spalding is a- sequence of flowers. It begins in the early year with forced flowers; it turns through the spring with the golden daffodils ; it flames into coloured beauty with the Darwin tulips, and then changes to the time of the peonies, the iris, the gladioli, and the chrysanthemums.

Last year the London, North-East-ern Railway took away from Spalding 1400 tons of cut flowers. There were nearly a quarter of a million boxes. On Thursday and Friday of this week there will be something like 50 Ums oi cut flowers leaving Spalding. . “In the old days the double daffodil used to grow wild all over this country. You’d find it in the stack yards, along the dykes, in the farms—everywhere.” This was Dick Wellband speaking—officially Mr R. D. Wellband, but “Dick” to everyone here. He was one of .the pioneers of the flower gardens of Spalding 4-5 years ,agb, when they used to sell daffodil bulbs as big as oranges for 10s a 1000. He showed me a little black book. On one page were the details of one of his purchases—lB2 bulbsi for £345. "It’s a wonderful gamble to some,” he said, and told me stories of the bulb which made horse racing seem silly by comparison. "These are not bad,” he said, showing- me a bunch of Golden Spur. I admired their beauty. “But these are better.” He turned a bunch of dainty Sir Watkins in the pale sunlight.

"And these!” He flashed before me a bunch of miraculous flowers, tlie finest King Alfreds, with great yellow trumpets like cloth of gold. “They make the othens look like wild flowers, eh ?” £35 A BULB.

For Dick Wellband is an enthusiast. He is always trying something new. He told me of the new bulb, called, aptly, Golden Harvest. Each bulb costs £35 ! He took me into his house and showed me an entirely new .flower, the Gubcries. “It’s a cross between a pyrethrum and something else. It’ll cause a sensation when -it’s shown, eh The flower has something of tho decorative simplicity of a Japanese print. Itvar ies in colour from ivory cream and buff to the flamelike tints of cerise, maroon, and scarlet. It is a marvellous flower, miraculous in its beauty.

1 went down to the Spalding Bulb Company's place, started two years ago as a branch of the De Graaf bulb firm in Holland. They have 80 acres here and another 150 on the marshes between the rivers. Here, among the baskets full of golden blooms, I talked to the manager.

“We can do as. good for daffodils as anything in Holland,” he said, "and the soil is better for tulips. In some varieties of daffodils, too, we can beat the Dutch fields.” “In ten years’ time,” another grower told me, “none of the daffodils you see to-day will be grown. They’ll all be superseded.” The bulb fields of Spalding are increasing. All kinds of people are going into it. As I tvent to the station I saw ten great trucks being loaded up. Their load -was daffodils for Easter. Ten trucks of daffodils ’. I did not know there was so much gold in the world. .