by Joyce Sparks
With the Filberg Festival rapidly approaching the Cutting Garden volunteers are ramping up for their annual contribution of flowers that will be seen throughout the park during the four day event. Placing flowers on the tables in the outdoor eating areas of the Filberg Festival was the brainchild of former board member and current Cutting Garden Co-ordinator, Sharon Rouleau and the welcomed tradition continues. The Filberg Festival is widely recognized as one of BC’s ‘prettiest’ festival events and the florals contributed by the Cutting Garden volunteers certainly add to the ambiance. Days before the Filberg Festival opens, volunteers are gathering flowers from the Liz Stubbs Cutting Garden and foraging throughout the Comox Valley for wild botanicals such as Yarrow, Queen Ann’s Lace and white Alfalfa. Conditioning the flowers overnight helps them to last for this revered four day festival. With the forty quart sized jars filled to the brim with colourful botanicals, the final touch of raffia ribbon is added to each arrangement and the bouquets are ready for placement on Festival opening day. The bouquets instantly create a charming and welcoming area for Festival goers. And the charm doesn’t stop there, bathrooms receive fresh flowers as well; not to mention many vendors who stop by to pick up some blooms to dress their booths. The resident Filberg Park deer population also enjoy these lovely arrangements so volunteers carefully move the arrangements to one of the outbuildings for the night and re-position them each morning. Now that you’ve had a quick glimpse of what Cutting Gardener’s do behind the scenes in support of the Filberg Festival, we hope that you will come to the Festival to enjoy the ambience, check out the 130+ vendors and take in the many wonderful sights and live music, August 2 through August 5, 2019.
