Giraudel/Eggleston Flower Festival a success organizers say

A display at the Flower Festival
A display at the Flower Festival

Despite some level of controversy, the first ever Giraudel/Eggleston Flower Festival has been dubbed a success by  organizers.

The event, which took place instead of the popular ‘Giraudel/Eggleston Flower Show,’ was held from May 8 to 10.

Organizers of the ‘Flower Show’ said the event will not be held this year due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

President of the Giraudel/ Eggleston Flower Growers Group, Stephanie Royer said, the group thought it was best to postpone the ‘Flower Show’ until further notice, “because we had no choice but to protect the members of the Flower Group…”

Despite this Ceaser Catin, one of the organizers of the Flower Festival, said although the event was affected by strong winds, support from the community was good.

“It is our first time and the way it was, it was good. It was nice,” he said. “Saturday night we had a very large turnout, also Sunday.”

He stated further for future Flower Festivals, organizers plan to have more promotions leading to the main event at an earlier date.

“We need to make the Giraudel Flower Festival a big event for both communities and if we can plan, work towards that and plan early enough, I think that can be a big thing,” Catin noted.

Catin also believes that the Giraudel/Eggleston Youth Group (the force behind the Flower Festival) and the Giraudel Flower Growers, which organizes the Flower Show, can unite to strengthen the Festival.

“We can make a solid force to push the Flower Festival forward and make it a major event,” he said.

According to him, the collaboration will not only benefit the Giraudel/ Eggleston community but Dominica on a whole.

The ‘Flower Festival’ began with an opening ceremony on Friday (May 8 ) followed by a flower exhibition, and a gospel festival on the same day.

On the following day (May 9), a ‘band splash’ was held with entertainment from the XS Groove band.

The final day (May 10) a family fun day was held which include bouncing castles, performance from dance groups from Giraudel, among other activities.

Sources told DNO that initially the Giraudel/Eggleston Flower Growers Group had agreed to collaborate with the Youth Group in staging the Flower Festival but it later disassociated itself from the event after a proposal for the Festival, which included a pageant, was circulated.

Royer said that her group had organized a series of meetings and the Flower Festival organizers were invited but they never attended.

“The very same people who are behind the Flower Festival, they were invited, given written invitations to attend community meetings and they never attend,” she said.

To complicate matters, Catin, said organizers of the Flower Festival could not use the government-funded venue that normally hosts the Flower Show “because of the back and forth with the Giraudel/ Eggleston Flower Growers…”

“It’s just that at the later moment, a week before the Flower Festival, the (Village) Council advised us to ask for it,” he explained. “Knowing that the government that funded it, the young people being outside hosting the event wasn’t looking good, so they advised us to ask for the building which we did but, it didn’t seem to go down well.”

However, Royer had said in an earlier interview with DNO no request was made at that time by the Flower Festival organizers to use the building.

She said if permission was asked, the building could be used “but with conditions.”

See displays Flower Festival below.

Copyright 2012 Dominica News Online, DURAVISION INC. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed.

Disclaimer: The comments posted do not necessarily reflect the views of DominicaNewsOnline.com and its parent company or any individual staff member. All comments are posted subject to approval by DominicaNewsOnline.com. We never censor based on political or ideological points of view, but we do try to maintain a sensible balance between free speech and responsible moderating.

We will delete comments that:

  • contain any material which violates or infringes the rights of any person, are defamatory or harassing or are purely ad hominem attacks
  • a reasonable person would consider abusive or profane
  • contain material which violates or encourages others to violate any applicable law
  • promote prejudice or prejudicial hatred of any kind
  • refer to people arrested or charged with a crime as though they had been found guilty
  • contain links to "chain letters", pornographic or obscene movies or graphic images
  • are off-topic and/or excessively long

See our full comment/user policy/agreement.

15 Comments

  1. correction
    May 13, 2015

    The flower jam they organised after they try to hijack the people flower show and make them pull out. Which one of the organisers have a flower garden.

    All for political gains…….smh labar like dabar. The guy allu want to run for labar next election allu come with to control the flower show and none of allu doh have a lucky Lilly much less a Rose….make the indigenous organizers run from something so good. Not even the name allu cud use…shame

  2. Pomsiten
    May 13, 2015

    It would be good to have also seen a report on the Green Mountain Flowers annual Mothers’ Day Plant Fair that took place on Sunday 10th May at the Roseau Market. This was at the same time as the Giraudel Flower Festival. To me and most others who saw the both shows, the quality of the Mothers’ Day Plant Fair was way above the Giraudel Flower Festival. More could be said about this but I will leave it to the reporter to be truthful and to have investigated this story.

    • May 13, 2015

      Well do not think that we can compare a function that is held in a small village Giraudel with that which is held in the Capital City–Roseau. Perhaps we need a more profound “community planning” harmony has to be key; but no matter how fruitful we will be Roseau is shore have more production.

  3. proud
    May 13, 2015

    In the short space of time and obstacles in their way they did well and I was proud of what i saw, the festival part of it all the people who showed up enjoyed. Next year will surely be greater you can count on that.

    • Wheel again
      May 13, 2015

      “Short space of time”……really. A reliable source said that they were planning this Flower Festival since February.

    • May 13, 2015

      Let us continue with that hope–our young people in the village must stand together; believing in the success of what they initiate. The only thing is that we make the moves in time–procrastination is a dreadful disease–we need to fight it off before it overcomes us.

  4. Homecoming
    May 13, 2015

    The story is quite sensationalized if you ask me but then again that’s expected. Being from the community I remember when Flower Show was about the flowers, creativity and the twin communities coming together. I recall my grandfathers labouring long and hard with getting material to build booths, the green thumbed working tirelessly on the main displays of the event and yes even the Flower Girl pageant, I still have those pictures. Creative booths lining the streets, flower plants on sale, food, yes music and even drinks (what a shock). Now it seems to have become, a fight for power and divisive as opposed to uniting.

    When did it become a tug of war between the young and the not so young or permission for venues. WOW. A blame game. Why don’t we decide as a community to take ownership of OUR FLOWER SHOW and make it even better than it used to be. This is a legacy that I still hope to enjoy on one of my visits home.

    • May 13, 2015

      Well said! But that is the norm of society, always seeking for power and fame, no matter how small our community. People seem to fail to understand the principle which says: According Jesus: A village divided against itself cannot stand–except that Jesus was speaking about a Kingdom.

  5. uk dominican
    May 13, 2015

    Surely there are so many different species of flowers and plants in DA I am sure that they could do better than that it is shabby. We have beautiful plants in Dominica and we should be at the Chelcea Flower show in London. look at barren Barbados they represent their country and beautiful to.
    Come on instead of following blues and reds and minding other people’s business mind your own and put those skills to good use

  6. Smiff
    May 12, 2015

    You are joking right? It was a total shambles and enbarrassing. Forget about ever doing it again mister and apologize to your villagers for letting they all down.

  7. May 12, 2015

    This report is a bit salt-less to me, I was looking for a report much bigger than last year. People of Giraudel and Eggleston –the young and the not too old–remember that without harmony there will be no production or united we stand, divided we will surely fall. We do not wan this to happen in our village–or do we?.

  8. Anon....
    May 12, 2015

    Ahhh, there we have it. A big difference between a show and a festival. We could hear the music way down in Loubiere. So really this is just another village fete in the making. Bottom line, did you make a profit ?? on selling flowers and plants etc. because that is what it should be about. Did many of the youths buy flowers and plants ?? or were they there just for the band and the bouncy castle. How many people paid 20 dollars to learn how to tie flowers together ?? this kind of thing should be free demo’s. if this is going to be yearly advent, you need to do your homework. I think you may have missed the marked audience for flowers and plants.

  9. Amarossa
    May 12, 2015

    Hmm…this sort of division being broadcasted on the media doesn’t spell good for any of the committees.

    I would advise that all of you work together under one umbrella, but create sub-committees where the youth can do their thing alongside the event.

    I remember hearing a ro-ro going on inside the Cockrane Rabbit Festival a few years ago, and since then, the event has been going downhill in terms of sponsorship and crowd turn-out.

    • kix
      May 12, 2015

      the media has their part to play… sensationalism is something else.

  10. kix
    May 12, 2015

    where the rest of the pics of the flower show?? oh wait I forget it was a jam… so where those pics? *sipping my tea*

Post a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

:) :-D :wink: :( 8-O :lol: :-| :cry: 8) :-? :-P :-x :?: :oops: :twisted: :mrgreen: more »

 characters available