Page 3059 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 September 2006
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ACTEW’s water conservation office offers visitors ideas on bright ways to design a water-conscious garden. In keeping with the carnivale theme, garden designer Cedric Bryant has created a colourful display showcasing exotic plants and design. The garden demonstrates ways to minimise water use and research on best practice lawn management. ActewAGL’s look ‘n’ learn marquee has also been popular. It offers people the opportunity to learn more about gardening, flower arranging and more.
As I said previously, every day Floriade presents a fantastic calendar of workshops, presentations and displays on gardening, flora, fauna on a diverse range of interesting topics. Visitors can discover everything about environmentally friendly homes, witness the art of ikebana, learn the skill of bonsai, learn about flower festivals around the world, find out how to grow and maintain beautiful orchids, be taught how to build a functional herb wheel, meet snakes, lizards and frogs from the National Zoo and Aquarium, learn how to deal with pesky garden pests, and much more.
As in 2005, Australian Capital Tourism is working in partnership with the local tourism industry to take the Floriade theme outside Commonwealth Park via a tourist trail. The trail is designed to broaden the appeal of Floriade and to encourage visitors to stay longer in the Canberra. This year’s trail includes 18 industry partners—two more than last year’s 16. The “world carnivale trail” around Canberra involves 18 tourist attractions, presenting world themed exhibitions and activities, including the National Museum of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, Cockington Green Gardens, old parliament House, the national portrait gallery and the national library.
This year, visitors to Floriade will also have the rare opportunity to attend the world tulip summit. This will be the first time the summit has been held in the southern hemisphere and the second time the event has been held since 1897. The summit will host guests from some of the world’s major tulip festivals and flower shows, including representatives from Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, the USA, Colombia and Australia.
Presentations about some of these great world flower and garden festivals will be held for visitors on site at Floriade during the world flower festivals weekend on 7 and 8 October in the ActewAGL look ‘n’ learn marquee. The year, Australian Capital Tourism has worked towards building on the success of Floriade 2005, which was hailed as the most successful event since Floriade began in 1988 and records commenced in 1999.
The 2005 theme, “rock ‘n’ roll in bloom”, a celebration of 50 years of rock ‘n’ roll in Australia, was reflected in last year’s garden designs and continued the tradition of joining the thematic display of flowers around a month-long calendar of entertainment and activities. The success of the 2005 Floriade was attributed to a significant promotional and marketing activity both locally and nationally, a stronger focus on entertainment on site, the popular theme and the assisted rock ‘n’ roll trail around Canberra.
An important feature in the success of Floriade was Australian Capital Tourism’s collaboration with 16 industry partners to present the rock ‘n’ roll theme to create the trail. With more than 356,000 visitors attending in 2005, the event provided a significant contribution to the local tourism industry and generated over $20.5 million for the local
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