Hanging basket display a year-round team effort
Members of the GB Rose Society and GB Garden Group planting out the hanging baskets. Photo: Maria Polglase.
It’s 9.30 am on an October Monday. In a purpose-built shadehouse at the Golden Bay Community Gardens, volunteers from the Rose Society and the Garden Club are up to their elbows in potting mix.
On the floor sit 3300 lobelia and impatiens seedlings ready to be planted in hanging baskets, 21 seedlings per basket. Later, several of Takaka Primary’s Enviroteam students turn up to help. By lunchtime, 150 baskets will be watered in and complete.
Once established, these 150, plus 40 more planted in begonias, will adorn the streets of Golden Bay’s townships all summer—35 in Collingwood, 2 in Bainham, and the rest in Takaka.
“Many people think they just arrive from somewhere and look after themselves,” says convenor Stuart Borlase, “but there’s a lot of work involved. In May the baskets are taken off the streets and in June we decide what we’re going to grow next season—species and colours.” The seedings are then sown and grown on—this year by Nelmac—and later planted by volunteers into TDC-owned wire baskets with West Coast sphagnum moss liners.
After their installation in the main streets, the Takaka baskets are watered daily by Murray Burnett and Stuart, tidied if necessary, and their irrigation systems regularly checked to keep the vivid balls of living colour in optimum health.
The basket project is in its sixth year, aided by funding from TDC and GB Promotions, and boosted by the 2008 TDC grant for the $5000 greenhouse at the community gardens, which is used, when not occupied by basket production, for garlic and other crops.
Helper Joan Fishley says that over the years the process has been refined.
“The sphagnum basket liners used to arrive flat and we had to cut them to fit the baskets, but now they arrive ready moulded to shape. The seedlings used to be grown together in flats, but now they arrive in individual peat pots, so they transplant much better. We also used to include petunias, but they’re too hard to maintain.”
Most gardeners know that keeping a flowering basket looking spectacular is far from easy, and neither is growing lush lobelia through the summer heat. Joan says some of the answer lies in the three tons of special potting mix that comes from Nelson. “It’s a secret recipe.”
Stuart laughs. “It’s worse than Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
More helpers would be welcomed, he adds. They can contact him at 525 8477.
Maria Polglase
