SPRING GLORY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21227, 25 September 1940, Page 6

SPRING GLORY

PAGEANT OF COLOUR FLOWERS AT MEMORIAL PARK BEAUTY OF GRASS AND TREES In the springtime, when flowers are in full bloom and lawns and trees are at their greenest, the chief glory of a city is its parks and gardens. No town in New Zealand could be more fortunate in this respect than Hamilton, with its Lake and public gardens, where there is always some new beauty to delight the eye. Loveliest of them all at the present time is the Soldiers’ Memorial Park, a pageant of colour with green shrubs, trim, well-kept lawns and ; flowers of every shape and hue, some ! massed in beds making a riot of j colour and others more exclusive I providing a show by themselves, i There are nemesias, Iceland pop- ; pies, wallflowers, violas, azalias and anemones. The highlight, however, is a bed of polyanthus—polyanthus in brilliant shades of red, orange, bronze, maroon, some with yellow eyes, others with white, some fringed, others plain—the whole effectively edged with a border of dark-blue violas. Scarcely inferior is a bed of pansies near the fernery, in which there are nearly 1000 plants in bloom. The delightful variations in colour, ranging from the richest reds and browns to the commoner yellows and blues, combined with the handsome markings and the size of the flowers, makes this a particularly attractive show. In the next bed the colourscheme is even more striking. A brilliant mass of anemones in shades of red, pink and blue has been edged with yellow violas, producing such a vivid effect that a neighbouring bed of Iceland poppies, colourful in themselves, seems somewhat eclipsed. Shrubs in Blossom Nearer the bridge, a mound of orange calendulas clustered around a telegraph pole to make beautiful what might Otherwise have been a barren corne>. T he S-shaped bed at the southron en( j c f the park has been plant w jth old-world wallflowers f\-amed with cream violas. Many o'/ the flowering shrubs, particular the azalias and the golden Rowoai, are reaching the end of their flov/ering season, but the crimson near the rockery are \ast coming into flower. When fully out these showy flowers should make one of the finest sights in Hamilton. The work of the park gardeners is never completed. Even before one season's plants are all in bloom preparations have to be made for the next. In the nursery, seed-boxes containing antirrhinums, begonias and other seedlings for summer and autumn lowering are already coming on. Tb.e lawns and edges also require «tonstant attention to keep them neat, an d with the large areas in SraF.s this is no light task. It speaks we 11 for the care and thoroughness J* x the curator and his assistants that y the Memorial Park is always so attractive and receives such favourable comment from visitors.