For the second consecutive year, the annual flower show held at the Government Botanical Garden in The Nilgiris will be a virtual flower show, with people being allowed to view the floral arrangements online.
The flower show, the marquee event of the annual summer festival, draws lakhs of tourists to the district each year. The show has been cancelled for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, floral arrangements have been made at the garden and videos of the arrangements have been uploaded to video-streaming platforms. No visitors will be allowed into the garden due to the pandemic.
On Friday, State Forest Minister and Coonoor MLA, K. Ramachandran inaugurated the virtual flower show.
According to officials from the Department of Horticulture, the biggest and most significant floral arrangement this year features a message promoting vaccination against COVID-19.
Sivasubramaniam Samraj, Joint Director of Horticulture, Nilgiris district, said that he hoped that people will see the floral arrangement, made with arranging thousands of flowering plants. “We wanted to emphasise the message that only through vaccination can we fight the pandemic and hope to return to some semblance of normalcy. Hopefully, everyone will get vaccinated and we can organise the annual flower show and allow visitors from next year onwards,” he said.
More than 25,000 plants have been arranged with more than 5 lakh flowers this year at the garden. The plants include liliums, dahlias, delphiniums, salvia, daisies, violas, varieties of verbena, asters petunias and a variety of other colourful, flowering plants.
Also present at the inauguration of the virtual flower show was Ooty MLA, R. Ganesh, Gudalur MLA, Pon Jeyaseelan, and Nilgiris Collector J. Innocent Divya.
