This week­end sees the Annu­al Rose Prun­ing Demon­stra­tion at the Lady Nor­wood Rose Garden in the Botan­ic Gar­dens.

Want to bone up on prop­er garden main­ten­ance? This is your chance! The Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil has laid on the roses, and the experts. There will be tips on both prun­ing AND grow­ing your roses. Dan­cing with the Stars con­test­ants may or may not be there. The same goes for the sur­viv­ing Beatles & Nas­tassja Kin­ski, but I remain hope­ful.

I usu­ally make wise with the Rose puns at this point, but she emailed this year & asked me to kindly stop.

There are two ses­sions:

1.30 – 2.30pm: prun­ing mod­ern roses in the Lady Nor­wood Rose Garden. Meet at the Bego­nia House.

2.30 – 3.30pm: prun­ing ram­bling and her­it­age roses at the Bolton Street Memori­al Park. Meet at the Sed­don Memori­al.

Grab your blades & go to it!

Addendum – Glow Worms:

While I’m on the sub­ject of the Gar­dens, I happened upon an offi­cial per­son tak­ing a bunch of schoolkids on a glow worm tour last week & feel I should pass on the intel­li­gence I gleaned on my way past them. The poor lady was stretched thin by 10 or so bored & rest­less boys. It did­n’t help that there were no worms glow­ing at all.

I’d wondered for a while, from per­son­al exper­i­ence, but as the lady snapped at the boys she con­firmed my the­ory that glow worms put on their best dis­play after rain or a heavy dew (I do not know why this is).

So should you be plan­ning a vis­it, do so soon after rain & while the worms can be found in most places in the Gar­dens, the easi­est to find & argu­ably best are on the main track between Glen Road & the Duck­pond.