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Flower Festival
A personal view
Sometimes we don’t realise how blessed we are, spoiled as many of us are by
world class exhibits, entertainment, personalities and the like on television.
Sometimes a village transcends its always ‘good-old-days’ past and the negative
nattering about the now, to present its own brief vision of a global achievement.
It seems to me we are most divinely human when we create extraordinary in-your-face
‘don’t-miss-this’ feelings, sounds, or visions.
Sometime ago I wrote about the extraordinary auditory experience of an inspired
peel of bell ringing at Bampton Church during the installation of the dapper
Reverend Stone. I was touched then. I have been touched again. This time by
the compelling visual experience I had at the Millennium Flower Festival with
its ‘Celebration’ theme in Bampton church. What so utterly amazes me is the
extraordinary talent that resides in the village. Each floral creation came
out of the and minds and fingers of familiar people one might meet picking over
stems of rhubarb at the local greengrocers, or perhaps buying sausages at the
butchers. Each captivating entanglement of blooms might be fashioned by the
same hands that wave to a friend across the double-parked cars in Brook Street,
or maybe by someone you rub shoulders with at the local fish and chip shop picking
up some local tasties because the ‘flower thing’ takes too much of their time,
leaving none to prepare a ‘proper’ dinner for ‘him’.
From the generative spirit of these folks came such innovative creations as:
an imaginative waterfall of floodlit scabius cascading down out of a hidden
flight of stone steps; red heleconiums (from Ecuador) fashioned into fish among
the sea-fan-like philodendrons creating a lifelike aquarium with an amaranthus
coral reef; three separated volcanic spumes of fire-like gladioli spouting from
a bed of crocosmia and dahlias; and several small, neat, exquisitely crafted
little panels of scenes made from insignificant bits of junk such as a tiny
bunch of plastic bananas, bits of straw, nut shells, bottle tops, etc, the kinds
of stuff birds might use. In the Lady Chapel by the organ, the elegant swish
of the modern imagination presented itself in the form of an upright flat spray
of four stark white cala lillies gathered in two swirls of green bamboo, taking
us into the century beyond that of the warmingly familiar old wagon wheel and
bale arrangement interlaced with various coloured blooms and grain-full stems
of straw, tugging us back to a nostalgic past we are reluctantly but inevitably
just about to let go of, as first-hand memories fade away. Such was the imaginative
creativity with plant life and plant remains, one gets the impression any of
these amateur floral artists could make a masterpiece out of anything that has,
or once had, a bit of life in it. The world is richer for these ‘floral design’
extensions that have spilled over from the flower arrangements ‘petalling’ our
sideboards.
Thank you to Ann Trigg and the organizers and floral fashioners of a visually
memorable world class event in the humble village of Bampton. I was moved. I
was touched by the depth and breadth of your extraordinary imaginations and
skills. Beautiful!
Jim Ward
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