Flowers Alive Exhibition - Wellington 2/3 May. Dame Cindy Kiro's speech to FASNZ Members.

Rt Hon Dame Cindy Kiro, GNZM, QSO Governor-General of New Zealand
Floral Art Society of NZ 60th Anniversary
and Prize giving
Tākina Exhibition Centre Friday 2 May 2025

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi o te motu e huihui nei, tēnei aku mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora tātou katoa.
It is my pleasure to be here, as your Patron, to open this year’s AGM and Conference of the Floral Art Society of New Zealand. Thank you very much for inviting me to join you in celebrating 60 years of creative floral expression – and in the presentation of awards for excellence in floral design.

I’d like to begin by specifically acknowledging life members Margaret Ashley and Heather Hammond – and all the competitors here this evening – tēnā koutou katoa.

It is only appropriate that you are holding this year’s celebration here in Wellington – where the seeds of the Floral Art Society were first sown. When that small gathering of enthusiasts met, they could not have imagined the nation-wide organisation that exists today, connecting people across Aotearoa, from the Far North through to Southland.

I know from personal experience that creative pursuits can be challenging, but also a source of great joy and satisfaction – and a great way to communicate our thoughts and feelings.

You are fortunate to work with what is surely the most beautiful of all artistic media – plants and flowers. Their beauty may be ephemeral and transitory, but in them we also see the seeds of renewal and the promise of new growth and flowering.

One of the challenges of creative pursuits is developing an understanding of the properties and limitations of the material we are working with, while also testing the limits of those materials in myriads of ways.
Renowned British florist Constance Spry summed up those many possible approaches when she said: “Do what you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be, and don't if you don't want to be”.

“Just be natural and light-hearted and pretty and simple and overflowing and general and baroque and bare and austere and stylized and wild and daring and conservative – and learn and learn and learn. Open your mind to every form of beauty.”

No doubt her words resonate with practitioners of floral art arranging, and I am looking forward to seeing how Constance Spry’s advice has been reflected in the floral displays I will see later this
evening.

Congratulations to the Floral Art Society of New Zealand for 60 years of creative design, inspiration and friendship. I wish you all well for your activities over the next few days, and trust that you will all return home full of new enthusiasm and ideas to explore in your floral art.