Church holds annual flower festival (From Watford Observer)

St Mary’s Church holds annual flower festival

3:05pm Friday 19th October 2012 in News By Amie Mulderrig, Features Writer

St Mary’s Church in Watford was awash with colour today, as the church held its annual flower festival.

Flower clubs and churches across Watford and Bushey have spent the past few months working together to create ornate floral displays to celebrate the Harvest Festival.

This morning, Mayor Dorothy Thornhill officially opened the exhibit which will be held from today until Sunday at the church in Church Street.

Mayor Thornhill, Liberal Democrat representative, said: "For me flowers always evoke strong memories, when I see dahlias I think of my grandfather’s plot and the dahlias he grew.

"When I had my portrait taken has civic mayor I had chose hold a yellow rose - much to the horror of a Labour representative, who thought it was something subversive, but really it was a flower, a yellow rose, that was always given to me by my father.

"So it’s wonderful today to see all of the hard work everyone has put into this flower festival.

"Christians across Watford doing good things across our town. It’s nice to see all of us working together."

John Way, organiser of the event, praised the hard work of all the teams involved in creating the floral displays, which depicted verses from psalms.

He said: "Being in the town centre we thought let’s have a festival that involves lots of people.

"Everyone has really pulled together and helped make the church look incredibly bright and beautiful.

"A special mention must go to our own flower club, who week on week ensure our floral displays are in full bloom."

Visitors will still be able to admire the blooms on Saturday from 10am until 6pm and Sunday noon until 5pm.

Entrance to the event costs £2.50.

A service celebrating the Harvest festival will be held on Sunday morning from 10.30am and there will also be songs of praise at 6.30pm.