Carnival gardens

TOOWOOMBA has just hosted a very successful Carnival of Flowers – congratulations, Toowoomba.

Our family experienced just a small part of this event, which we shared with two young granddaughters from Brisbane.

Our first visit was to Queens Park, and this included admiring all the gardens from ground level and from above, from the viewing station and then from the ferris wheel. There was plenty of space for a good run on the grass even though our visit was at 9am and the gardens were abuzz already with many admirers young and not so young, admiring the beauty.

We took lots of photos and the girls made colourful drawings of their favourite picture when we came home.

We then moved on to two gardens.

The first was that of the amazing gardeners Leisa and Serge Rossignol in Neil Street. All their awards were so well deserved. Their artistry from their setting on their deck to the cottage at the back and its memories of yesteryear were very appealing to all visitors. Oh, and the flowers and vegetables were beautiful too.

I loved the sight of a very productive artichoke plant. The girls came home and made jam jar floral arrangements from our garden to gift to a special lady. We had thought the Rossignol’s jam jar arrangements were a fitting welcome to their very diverse garden.

Our last garden to take the girls to visit was that of Fay and Les Stephson just up the road in Perth Street.

Each year we visit this garden and are amazed at the love of garden, beauty and indeed of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers of this amazing couple.

We have lost count of the number of years Fay and Les Stephson have shared their garden with probably thousands of visitors. It did not have a banner for a prize this year, but we all thought it was a winner.

The girls loved this garden and they said “We would love to play hide and seek in this garden”. Here there were so many surprises in this garden.

Even their footpath has a bright and cheery welcome with colourful flowers – cars driving by can enjoy this too. The girls came home and played hide and seek.

Another carnival experience we all enjoyed was a visit to DownsSteam. Here the love of trains and art are shared by the loyal volunteers. The carnival spirit was not lost as the gardens here were special as well.

After all of these activities, the girls came into our garden and helped in some garden chores and we shared afternoon tea there.

We thank all gardeners for blessing our community and making Toowoomba the Garden City.

DOROTHY TOWNSEND, Toowoomba