Flower festival success

It wasn't easy. But as a succession of admiring visitors found over the Bank Holiday weekend, where there's a will there's a floral way.

Ladies' Supper Club members - principally Sue Parkinson and Joan Turnwell - excelled themselves with a centenary celebration which matched ingenuity and symbolism with floral beauty.

They set themselves the daunting double objective not only of mounting major displays to mark each of the decades since the Methodist church was opened in March 1907 but of creating a smaller display for every one of the intervening years.

What an exhibition of archive photographs and cuttings told in the hall, the ladies illustrated in flowers in the church.

"Hats, hems and headlines" provided the link between the Edwardian elegance of the festival foundation by the door through the decades to the triumphal centenary array around the Lord's table.

Organists Mavis Foskett and Hazel Abraham took turns to set the scene musically as visitors worked their way through the product of almost a year of historical research, meticulous planning and inspired imagination which had been interpreted with skilled hands.

"United they stand" read the newspaper bill for 1907 - also the year that Suffragettes appeared in court.

The long hemline belonged to the reproduction of an Edwardian dress, set off by gold roses and alstromeria white gladioli, lisianthus and carnations.

There was a black backcloth marking king Edward's funeral procession, watched by 500,000 mourning subjects.

Gold marked the Twenties - symbolising Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and Albert Hill's two Olympic gold medals for Britain.

The hat marking the Thirties evoked the style of Mrs Wallis Simpson and the agonies of the Abdication Crisis. A gold trumpet shone through the floral display marking Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra providing the first music from the corporation's new headquarters at Portland Place.

A khaki backdrop, broken timber and masonry evoked the Blitz but there was London Pride at its heart and chrysanthemums, carnations, lisianthus and gladioli spoke also of the new hope offered by the Forties through cradle-to-grave NHS health care.

Gold throne, orb and sceptre and the "Vivat Regina" newsbill dominated the Fifties creation.

Layers of hit Beatles discs rocketed skywards from a base of deep red lilies beside a crescent moon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's Sixties moon-walk was contrasted with the Fab Four's achievements.

The New English Bible, which sold a million copies in a day when first published in the Seventies, had central place in display in which two symbols of the Ministry pointed to the Methodist Conference's decision to give women equal opportunities in the church.

Nelson Mandela's chains lay discarded at the base of a Nineties display in which the opening of the Channel Tunnel was evoked by an arbour of green and Freedom's triumph was illustrated by a towering creation of carnations, alstomeria and lisianthus.

By the time visitors passed through the Millennium to get to the ultimate display they had travelled through decades of history illustrated by cascades of colour. At every turn, photo albums marked the way members from succeeding generations had served church and Saviour.

An evocation of a 1907 pinafore to the left of the centenary display was countered by one of a contemporary school dress.

The years 1907 and 2007 were picked out in white chrysanthemums. The Ladies' Supper Club had spanned their church's centenary with elegance and panache.

Christchurch enters its second century with an ambitious project to convert an adjoining house into a centre with meeting rooms. The flower festival raised .........for church funds.