karachi 60th flower show

KARACHI: The Horticultural Society of Pakistan’s (HSP) 60th Flower Show 2011 received an overwhelming response from people on its opening day Thursday at the beach park.

During the press briefing before the show, the HSP’s Fahim Siddiqui said that they had planned to establish a Botanical Garden on Rashid Minhas Road. The government had allocated them 30 acres of land in 1981, but the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) occupied the land illegally. Even tedious litigation and the Sindh High Court’s judgment in HSP’s favour could not remove the encroachment.

At the show, visitors bought and surveyed the well-adorned and well-managed varieties of flowers, shrubs, plants, gardening tools, imported fertilising products and bouquets.

The HSP received 120 entries in about 46 active categories of the gardening competition. Being a mega event, the show attracted 40 volunteers from the University of Karachi’s agriculture department along with students from the DHA Degree College for Women. They were motivated and trained by HSP Joint Secretary Dr Farhat Aga. Serenading the visitors were bagpipers of the Navy band.

Another interesting endeavour of the HSP is the production of rare and expensive plants, indigenously, through tissue culture. They have already arranged for a tissue culture lab and scientific equipment and plan to launch this initiative in the next few months.

The first show had only cost Rs1,400, but prices have been raised and as a non-profit organisation, the HSP is unable to meet such expenses without civil society’s support.

The HSP plugged environment-friendly features that can be implemented in domestic gardens. It has plans to obtain more gardens and to hold workshops to promote environmentalism such as using recycled water, mulching to reduce evaporation, drip irrigation to conserve water, solar lighting and producing compost.

On a larger scale, the HSP’s chairman has offered some suggestions and expert technical assistance to the 18 Town Municipal Administrations (TMA). They proposed that the TMAs revive the nurseries that were once maintained by the now defunct KMC, hold horticultural exhibitions to encourage residents to garden and consider equipping their horticultural department’s vehicles with tools to maintain the landscape and to aid the residents.

Siddiqui also suggested they introduce ‘City Forests’ by planning timber trees in one or two parks in an effort to reduce air pollution.

The Express Tribune,

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A large number of people, including women, children and the elderly, took a keen interest in the display of a wide variety of plants and flowers of both local and exotic origin on the opening day of a Flower Show at the Seaview Beach on Thursday.

The 60th Pakistan Flower Show 2011 at the DHA Seaview Public Park is being organized by the Horticulture Society of Pakistan (HSP) in collaboration with the Defence Housing Authority and the Cantonment Board Clifton. The event visibly reshaped the mood of the visitors for heralding the arrival of the spring season in the city and provided an ample opportunity to the people to get physically and mentally relaxed and forget about everyday stress.

The visitors to the show used the opportunity for spending quality time with their family members. Speaking at a press briefing on the opening day of the Flower Show, the HSP Chairman, Fahim I Siddiqui, said the Horticulture Society was established in Pakistan in 1948, and since then it had been organizing its annual flower shows and competitions regularly except for two years when the show could not be held due to some unavoidable circumstances.

At the press briefing, the HSP president was flanked by A. K. Khan Sahib, the life president of the horticulture society, General Jehanzeb Arbab, former chairman of the society and chairman of the flower show committee, and Commodore Ashfaq Beg, secretary of the society. He said that a special makeshift auditorium had been established at the show’s venue for conducting workshops by local and some foreign experts on different techniques of floral art arrangements, plantation, and gardening including the art of Bonsai.

He said that such workshops would be conducted on all the three days of the floral show. He said that around 60 stalls and pavilions of different organizations and armatures were set up to display a large variety of plants and flowers at the show.

He said the competition at the flower show was being held in 60 different categories of plantation, gardening, and flower arrangements, for which 100 entries had been made by various organizations and other floral and gardening enthusiasts. The Floral Show will remain open for the general public till February 27 (Sunday) from 10am to 10pm. —Photo by The News