Eunice posted: "The recent bank holiday weekend has seen this year's Manchester Flower Festival taking place over four days with many colourful displays and installations situated in different locations around the city centre, and armed with a list I spent several hours " Life In The Mouse House
The recent bank holiday weekend has seen this year's Manchester Flower Festival taking place over four days with many colourful displays and installations situated in different locations around the city centre, and armed with a list I spent several hours trekking round to find them.
First on the list was the giant inflatable sculpture Turing's Sunflowers in the Arndale shopping centre, paying tribute to the brilliant mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing who believed that the spiral shapes on sunflower heads followed the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical concept which appears frequently in nature.
Round in New Cathedral Street several displays ran the length of the pedestrianised area and in the open-sided floral marquee I found Baby Bloom, a pretty take on the world's first electronic stored-programme computer, the Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) otherwise known as The Baby, invented in Manchester and running its first programme in June 1948. Another display I liked was Best Day Ever, a table set for a romantic occasion with colourful blooms including roses, hydrangeas and peonies.
Towards the end of the row was the Grey Goose 'Vive Le Spritz' terrace with the world's smallest spritz bar serving summer spritz cocktails, and on the nearby steps a large Vimto can planted with flowers and fresh berries celebrated Manchester's iconic fruit cordial, while round the corner twinned mannequins looked out from one of the windows of M & S.
It's not just any window, it's an M & S window
Across the road and in the Royal Exchange arcade was something which made me smile - a lovely display of late spring flowers celebrating Hilda Ogden, the iconic and much-loved Coronation Street character, complete with hair curlers, mop, bucket and rubber gloves. Close to the St. Ann's Square entrance was Suffragette City, inspired by Emmeline Pankhurst and the women's suffrage movement which started in Manchester. The figures were made of twisted willow and the horse and rider from last year's festival had been repurposed to represent the most infamous protest of the movement where Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of the King's horse at the Epsom Derby in June 1913.
Past the play zone and sensory garden was the Cotton Bud Fountain representing the county flower of Manchester and The Hive, a unique construction of coloured 'glass' panels surrounded on three sides by plants and flowers, with the fourth side being partially open for visitors to walk in. It was the highlight of the festival for me though the photos don't really do it justice.
Round in St. Ann's Place were the wheelbarrow gardens with the first one displaying red and blue plants celebrating the city's two football teams, while a pair of wheelbarrows were planted with bee-friendly flowers and plants to encourage and increase pollination, helping to bring bees back to the city. Sitting under a Canal Street sign was Queer As Flowers, a tribute to Manchester-based tv writer Russell T Davies and his ground-breaking 1999 drama Queer As Folk which was set in the city's Gay Village. A bold wheelbarrow filled with an array of bright colours representing the Manchester Pride flag, it included an abundance of pansies as a tongue-in-cheek response to the use of the word as an insult to certain members of the LGBTQ community.
On the next corner was Mamucium, a display bringing the past and present together with the modern high rise towers of Deansgate Square contrasting with the old mosaics of the city's Town Hall, surrounded by plants representing those first brought to the UK by the Romans including rosemary, thyme and roses.
Although not included in the official Festival list the Belvedere contemporary office block, tucked away down a side street, had a lovely cottage garden display outside the entrance. With a wishing well, miniature watering cans, butterflies and lots of colourful blooms it was worth the extra steps to find it and photograph it.
I got so many photos during the hours I spent in the city that it would be impossible to put them all in one post so I've split them into two lots and the next post will feature some of the fringe displays plus those in King Street, with lots more colour to come.
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