SAGES flower show attracts thousands

Shriniwas Joshi

CLOSE on the heels of the flower festival of the children, by the children, the Shimla Amateur Garden and Environment Society (SAGES) organised its annual feature ‘The Flower Show’ on the space around Indira Gandhi’s statue on The Ridge. As ever, it attracted thousands of visitors and the flower lovers this year too. Colleen Craddock from Nashville, TN, the USA writes in the Visitor’s book: “I’m impressed! Splendid creative work using natural materials.” Sabiha Farhat and Rehan coming from Delhi write, “A very impressive display of unique composition.” Lakshman Thakur baptised SAGES as the lungs of Shimla and Manorama Sharma felt that the flowers had the capacity to fill new vigour in a person and make one aware about keeping the environment green and clean.

Late RSS Chauhan, the first president of SAGES, had visualised that a flower arrangement competition by schoolchildren would initiate the flower show and the students of the topmost school would inaugurate it. With times, SAGES shifted from a single item to the Children’s Flower Festival of two days. The school that outshines others in the festival gets the chance of inaugurating the flower show On The Ridge and the credit for the year was grabbed by Dayanand Public School (see photo).

SAGES believes that children are the ones who are vital for deciding how the world is going to be after a few years. So, if one can do some good in the life of a child then there can, at least, a little change in the world to come. SAGES touches their creative side. I am reminded of a poem here, “Many years from now/ It would not matter/ What kind of school I attended/ What kind of house I lived in/ Nor what my clothes look like/ But the world may be a little better/Because I was important in the life of a child.”

This year, there were 147 exhibits of 29 individuals in the shape of pots, besides the containers of government departments and the sale counters of the individuals. But I have to mention two names, Vineet Chawdhry and Upma Chawdhry, the husband-wife duo, both Additional Chief Secretaries in the government who stole the show by bagging eight prizes in different categories, besides that of the best exhibit of the show — a reddish hydrangea (see photo).

Why am I mentioning the names? Two years back, when Vineet had the charge of horticulture, SAGES had invited him as the chief guest at its prize distribution function and he announced from the rostrum that the next year he would be one of the participants. The flower show had motivated him and for two years, he and his wife worked hard along with their gardener, Mahinder, whom Vineet calls his Man Friday, and, today, Chawdhrys can proudly claim to be the possessors of the best garden in Shimla with exquisite flowers in the pots. Their azalea was still flowering in the month of June when this had flowered and withered by then.

I discussed with Durlabh Singh Puri, a reputed floriculturist who resided in Solan and was one of the judges in the flower show, about the criterion of judging the flowerpots. He enunciated five characteristics: cultural perfection-vigorous, healthy appearance of the flowers including the foliage; distinctiveness – meritorious and aesthetic appeal, noteworthy in size and relationship to the container; bloom – quality and quantity of bloom including freshness and substance; flowers –their colour, mass effect and also rarity; and maturity – size of plant and foliage characteristic of a mature specimen. Those who would be competing in the Flower Shows anywhere could get a hint from it as to what the judges saw while ranking an entry.

Professor ADN Bajpai, Vice Chancellor of Himachal Pradesh University, as the chief guest appreciated the work done by SAGES and was so impressed that he declared that, if invited in future, he would come to the show from wherever he might be. He laid emphasis on maintaining the naturalness of the blossoms instead of going in varieties which rob of many beneficial properties of the flowers.