Carterton Daffodil Carnival

September 13, 2009 by Avalon
Filed under: Things to do

For the first time since moving here (nearly 4 years ago) we actually made it to the annual Daffodil Carnival.

It’s probably a little known fact that Carterton is indeed the “Daffodil Capital of New Zealand”. This apparently dates back to 1890 when Alfred Booth bought Middle Run and planted the 7-acre garden with half a ton of Daffodil bulbs. From 1925 the daffodils were sold in Wellington to raise funds for the Plunket Society, and this continued until the work became too much and at that point, Middle Run was opened to the public on Sundays during September.

In 1996, the council decided to name the town the Daffodil Capital of New Zealand and stated planting an awful lot of daffodils, and the local people started doing it as well: a total of 12,000 bulbs were planted, on council and private land. The town even has a special bulb named after it – the Carterton Belle. *

Vintage Firetruck
Now we have the Daffodil Carnival, which is basically a street fair, not unlike the Martinborough fair – just a lot smaller. It actually makes a nice change to see the town so alive and full of people. The cafes were all doing a roaring trade, and the pavements were full of stalls and people spending money, or just wandering around in the sun and browsing. I counted 7 separate bands playing at different points along the high street – with a bit of something for everyone from the ubiquitous Pan Pipe music, to folk and rock and roll. Not the sort of think you generally expect in sleepy Carterton.

Memorial Square

Bouncy Castle

In fact – the only thing that let the whole day down – was the almost total absence of any – erm – daffodils.

It seems that usually we would expect a trail of gold to be leading people into Carterton – starting at an area of planting at the Entrance to the town which spells out “Carterton”. Apart from a few hardy yellow blooms round the edge of it – its not covered in Daffs. And not one of the council owned flowerbeds has any daffs in them either – in fact all of the new ones (we have had some extensive alterations) were bare soil. Its not a good look.

The hardy (or irony-loving) proprietors of one of the stalls did their best to bring a bit of humour to the event by planting some plastic flowers in the council bed next to them.

Plastic Daffs

* This information was taken from a letter by Margaret Leach to the Carterton Crier, which acknowledges the Carterton District Historical Society and Carterton: Biography of a Country Town and District by David Yerex.

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