Saying it with flowers a musical treat

Florist Mary Ritchie with friends looks at the way Heather Monk used her blooms to create this free-standing design called "Opposites Attract."

Each year the Dannevirke Floral Art Group sets itself a challenge to reflect a theme when it puts on its annual display in the Rawhiti Masonic Lodge.

This year it was "Floral Tune" and a huge number of visitors on Saturday and Sunday October 17-18 were amazed to see more than 50 designs reflecting the theme, each genre (which sets the parameters of size and shape) having a sub-theme like Composition, What's My Song, The Beat and Sweet Notes.

These three represented "The Beat."

Walking in past exquisitely decorated music boxes, focus immediately moved to the free-standing floor designs interpreting "Composition", with titles like Ring of Fire, Opposites Attract, and While My Guitar Weeps.

Yukimi Brown's The Human Race incorporated three people of different ethnicity representing the contribution of the many cultures to music and was the dominant structure, towering two metres from the floor.

Scattered around the hall on tables the other genres were displayed, every item different and amazingly inspired by music like the "What's My Song" category, which had titles ranging from Sailing to I Never Promised You A Rose Garden and the bright red and orange Ring of Fire to Bluer than Blue, which had its own mist.

Each item could easily have taken 5-10 minutes to analyse processing the title, the structural base, the use of foliage and flowers, the message and the motivation.

Close to 20 floral artist members of the group, three of whom reside in Levin, Masterton and Inglewood, contributed to the show and from the glorious result it is no wonder they want to come to be a part of it.