Empress Flower Show and Fest will be open till Jan 26

PUNE:  The annual Empress Garden’s flower show - The Empress Flower Show and Festival - 2020 kicked off on Friday in the city. Organised by Agri-Horticulture Society of Western India, it will be open to all till January 26. However, the unseasonal rainfall played a spoilsport for the nurseries that were part of this exhibition as they could not bring many plants as they bring every year.

“I am extremely honoured to be here and Empress Garden authorities are doing incredible work. People from the city or even other places should come here to witness the work done by them and encourage them,” said Ritu Chhabria, President, Mukul Madhav Foundation who inaugurated the flower show on Friday.

Suresh Pingle, Secretary, Agri Horticulture Society, said, “For this flower show, we have around three lakh flowering plants and the floral arrangement was done by the staff of Empress Garden. For the first time, we are hosting this exhibition for 10 days so that there are two weekends and the crowd gets evenly distributed. Otherwise, if there is only one weekend, around 50,000 to 60,000 people come and it becomes difficult to manage the crowd.”

Talking about the difficulties faced due to unseasonal rainfall, Pingle said, “The extended rainfall created havoc with the plants in the nursery. We were extremely apprehensive about this flower show as well. Thankfully, we managed to conserve some plants and could host this flower show.”

The unseasonal rainfall also played a spoilsport for the nurseries as the unseasonal rainfall destroyed their nursery plants and flowering could not take place in their remaining plants. Machinder Nath of Machindernath Nursery said, “Every year, my nursery has a stall in this exhibition but this year, there are less plants as around 50 per cent of my plants, especially roses, were destroyed due to unseasonal rain.”
Amit Dahale, Orchid Flora nursery which is famous for orchid plants, could not bring any orchid plant to this exhibition due to unseasonal rain. He said, “My nursery deals with orchid plants but due to extended rainfall, all orchid plants were destroyed. Apart from orchid, other plants were also destroyed as there were hardly any flowering.”

Apart from the colourful and beautiful floral arrangement, other major attractions were the floral portraits of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi made up of yellow and orange marigold flowers. Charu Chandra Bhede, Member of Empress Garden, said, “It took me six hours to make these portraits and since it is the 100th death anniversary of Lokmanya Tilak and 151th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we wanted to pay a tribute through these portraits.”

There were competitions of floral arrangement and a painting competition will be held during the exhibition. The prize distribution for the same will be held on January 19. The other major attraction of this flower show was Bonsai display and Ikebana - Japanese floral arrangement by Mona Pingle.