Blooming beauties take the prize
Gardeners were rewarded for their hours of hard work cultivating beautiful flowers at the North Island national dahlia show at Feilding’s Civic Centre.
More than 1000 of the best dahlias in the country, of all colours and sizes, were on show at the weekend and it was Napier’s Loretta Neilson who was judged to have the best.
Neilson’s three-headed orange Kea Julie dahlia won the overall prize for best vase and she also won the award for champion bloom with her Kea Magic, a large white dahlia.
The Kea Magic had minor imperfections compared with the Kea Julie.
Neilson has been a member of the national dahlia society for 53 years and said it took a lot of work to get her flowers to that level of quality.
She has a special garden for her dahlias to protect them from trees and bugs.
David Barrie from O¯ piki had two flowers in the premier section and it is only his second year taking his flowers to shows.
Dennis Rodgers, vice president of the National Dahlia Society of New Zealand, said the judges looked at flowers to find the closest to perfection.
‘‘Even after 36 hours or so after judging the flowers still look in good condition.’’
There were 25 exhibitors from Auckland, to Te Puke, to Timaru, Ashburton and Christchurch.