Saying it with flowers

How flowers can brighten up sombre moments, how they add to the lives of the downcast, and how very aesthetic they are was the subject of a lecture by Australian floral designer Mark Pampling at a hotel on Friday evening.

The lecture was sponsored by the Pakistan chapter of the World Flower Council. Pampling, in his demonstration lasting almost two hours and fifteen minutes, demonstrated design techniques using bright coloured and white flowers and described how these floral arrangements influenced moods and brightened up things.

In a certain case, he showed how to decorate flowers against a bare backdrop. He demonstrated this by decorating a collection of twigs, bare twigs with not a fleck of greenery on them. He decorated them with a variety of bright coloured flowers and at once those bare twigs came alive and beautiful.

Then, he showed a big round object made of wicker, simple and bare, which on being decorated with flowers looked absolutely gorgeous.

His techniques seemed to elicit a lot of interest among floral enthusiasts. Pampling, a floral designer from Queensland, Australia, has been awarded Australia’s top floristry prize, the inter-flora Australia Cup.

Shahima Sayeed, president of the Pakistan chapter of the World Flower Council, talking to The News, said that the first and foremost reason for holding this programme was to convey a soft image of Pakistan to the world. She referred to the bad press Pakistan was getting the world over with all that terrorism and political infighting.

She said that it was their earnest endeavour to let the world know that we Pakistanis were as much endowed with an aesthetic sense and loved the finer things of life. In this regard, she said that Phubast Chemesdre, the florist of the Thai Royal family, had said the people of Pakistan were extremely hospital and congenial and that he would dedicate a special section to Pakistan in his workplace.

Besides, she said the Pakistan government had banned the import of flowers as they said it was a luxury item. She said that this decision of the government would affect the livelihood of those who eked out an existence by potting these flowers and selling them. Now with the ban on imports, they have been deprived of their chances of earning even a modest bit.

She suggested that if the ban is going to stay, domestic growers must be given

incentives in the form of financial aid and small plots, which would serve as flower beds. The World Flower Council was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Oklahama, USA. Their motto is: World peace through flowers.