Spring flowers

Today I awoke to glorious spring weather so off I went to Floriade.  I went alone as DH does not like flowers, crowds and suffers from hay-fever.  Floriade is the biggest flower festival in the southern hemisphere with  over 1 million bulbs and annuals planted each year. (including 87 varieties of tulips, 45 varieties of pansies and 13 varieties of hyacinths).  You can just imagine the scent of all those hyacinths - it was beautiful.  The flower planting is staggered so there are flowers on display for the whole month.The garden beds cover 9,105 square metres.

It started in 1988 to celebrate Canberra's 75th birthday.

At the end of Floriade (in mid October) the gardens are all dug up, bulbs sold to the public and any flowers left are picked and given to hospitals and nursing homes in the region.

It was difficult to take photos without any people in! However I tried very hard and managed a number of shots without humans - these ones below give the impress that I am all alone - sadly I wasn't, there were thousands of people getting in my way.

 In one of the exhibition tents they had some beautiful flower displays plus these gorgeous handmade theatre dresses.

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