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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 204, 25 August 1873, Page 2

Wellington Horticultural Show. — -A very successful winter horticultural show was held in Wellington on Thursday last. In reporting it, the ' independent says: — It was mid-winter, and what could be expected in August in the way of flowers, fruits, or vegetables ? Strange to say there was enough of each to create an unmistakeable feeling of gratified sur--nr^aj"jaw pltoekH/fi-'^W^tovat from home may be imagined. The variety of flowers were of course limited and deficient in the perfumes of summer, but but they still presented a beautiful array; the fruits were not many, but very choice of their kind, and oddly enough amongst them figured a dish of strawberries. The vegetables, above all, bore no trace of the hybernal season — cauliflowers, potatoes, turnips and other edible roots, looking as well as if they were tho product of good soil and a raid-summer sun. In flowers there was a rea;al display of that horticultural winter star, the camellia. It was there- in inconceivable variety of shape and combination of color. Amongst the wonders of the winter kitchen garden were a couple of fine bundles of asparagus, a huge cauliflower, a fine savoy, "murphies" that would do credit to the Emerald Isle, and swedes that perhaps could not be surpassed at any time. A fine plate of Lisbon lemons, in the centre of which shone a shaddock, or, as it is more commonly called, " forbidden fruit," all of them grown in the open air Two giant tubers, lying in a corner, foreshadowed what may yet be done in tbe country in the growth of sugar beet, and the manufacture of beet sugar. These enormous specimens were grown in Taranaki, and were presented by Dr Hector, who has a number of them in bis hands now for analysing their saccharine qualities.