Be part of the annual fun- lled Carterton Da odil Festival on Sunday 10 September 2023, which attracts over 10,000 visitors to the district. This is one of the town’s biggest days, with community groups and businesses coming together to put on a show. Bring the family and catch a free bus to historic Middle Run, opposite Gladstone Vineyard, to pick a bunch of da odils for $4 CASH. Scouts will be sizzling sausages and co ee can be purchased. All the proceeds from the da odil picking are
split each year between the Carterton Plunket Clinic and St John Ambulance Service.
The only way out to Middle Run this year is to catch a free shuttle from Carterton. There is no parking available at the da odil picking and anyone arriving in their own car will be turned away.
Jenny Gasson, Carterton District Council’s Community Events Coordinator, notes that to access Middle Run you will need a pass which will be issued on the shuttles. No pass, no entry. Avoid disappointment and catch the shuttle buses which regularly leave Carterton from the corner of Broadway and Masson streets, with the rst bus leaving at 10am. Picking nishes at 2.30pm, at
which time the last bus back to Carterton leaves from Middle Run.
Middle Run is beautiful, but it’s a rural property, so warm clothes and a jacket are advised. “Most importantly wear appropriate footwear. I’d suggest the whole family wears gumboots but depending on the weather you may get away with sneakers. Don’t forget to wrap the kids up warm too,”
Jenny says.
Whānau Āwhina Plunket, a bene ciary of the Da odil Festival’s proceeds, is located at Ron Wakeling Wing, Carterton Events Centre at 50 Holloway Street, Carterton, and can be contacted on 0800 184 803. Plunket o ers free health and development checks, a
24/7 parenting line, help with breastfeeding, and a range of both in-person and virtual services. If you’re pregnant or have just had a baby, you can sign up with Plunket through its website.
The other bene ciary of proceeds, St John’s, is a charity that provides health shuttles, youth programmes, medical alarms, rst aid training and more, across Wairarapa. It will be in attendance on the day of the Da odil Festival. The festival o ers multiple other opportunities for family fun including a horse-drawn surrey ride, bargains at the High Street markets, food stalls, street performers, the amazing Wai Art Show, and a steam train ride to Masterton and back.
As always, we never know what will happen on the day as we rely on seasonal owering and the weather to play ball, so it’s important that those wishing to go to
Georgina Beyer, Carterton’s Mayor from 1995 to 1999, suggested Carterton be named the Da odil Capital of New Zealand. If you pop to Carterton on the second Sunday in September this year, you’ll see that the name has merit.
Middle Run farm, in Gladstone, is the place to go for da odils. Former owner E.A. (Alfred) Booth planted thousands of bulbs on this property in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although from a timber milling background, Alfred took up pastoral farming and developed his interest in horticulture, going on to import new da odil varieties from Holland and cross-pollinating them to produce new hybrids.
Alfred died in 1918 and his eldest son Willian Henry (known as Henry) took over both Middle Run and his father’s passion for da odils. Henry continued his father’s hybridisation programme and decided that half a ton of surplus stock should be ploughed into a spare seven acres, letting the da odils grow wild. Natural fertiliser is supplied by the sheep who graze the paddocks in the o season.
It was in the 1920s when Henry’s wife Alice decided the blooms in the front paddock could be put to good use for the community.
Volunteers picked the blooms, which were sent to the Wellington vegetable and ower market with local grower Willy Wong. The proceeds from their sale (usually sixpence a dozen) were given to the Carterton Branch of the Plunket Society right from the start.
A change of approach took place in the late 1950s, when the grounds were opened to the public instead –people were given the opportunity to pick a bunch for an entry fee of two
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shillings. Some people, of course, took advantage of the opportunity, stripping the paddocks bare and walking away with enormous containers overloaded with owers and even taking the bulbs themselves. After that, the Booth’s introduced a quota system. Down through multiple generations, the Booth owners of Middle Run have continued the tradition of da odil picking and donating the proceeds.
In 1983, Dick Booth decided that Carterton needed an ambulance, and it was at that point that St Johns joined the Plunket Society as a bene ciary of the proceeds from Da odil Day.
www.cdc.govt.nz/daffodil
A wonderful way to spend part of the day on Sunday
10 September is a trip on the steam train, the Da odil Express, branded with the Wairarapa Times-Age logo.
More than 500 people have already booked out the return trip from Wellington to Carterton, with the train pu ng into Carterton station around 10.30am.
Tickets are still available for a local return trip that leaves Carterton at 10.50am sharp, arrives at Masterton at 11.15am and departs at 12.50pm back to Carterton. During the layover in Masterton, food vendors will be available at the station and the stokers can have a rest before getting back into shovelling coal into the boilers.
To nd out more about Da odil Express tickets or to purchase them, go to www.cdc.govt.nz/ da odil.
Eion Clarke built the surrey himself in 2015, exclusively for fundraising events, and it’s designed so that people can easily get in and out of the wagon.
Eion says about the horses: “Pete was a rescue horse and Antz an ex-trotting horse.”
Being the master craftsman he is, Eion has also made two junior rocking horses from recycled rimu for sale on Da odil Day.
With the road closed and more than 120 stalls, Da odil Day on Sunday 10 September in Carterton will be buzzing with a festive atmosphere and over 10,000 people. Food vendors, jewellery, clothing, pickles and jams, wooden crafts, and so much more will be on o er. There will be lots of things for kids including face painting, fun rides, and a ‘dunking stool’ to raise money for the local swimming club.
It’s e cient,” says Grant.
On the Friday before Carterton’s Da odil Day, Grant walks the streets with cans of paint, to mark out the stall sites. “Then it rains,” he says, “And so we mark it out again before the stallholders arrive about 5am on the Sunday.”
On the day itself, Lions are on hand to help direct the stallholders. And the Lions chip van will be there all day.
Hauling the train will be Ja 1271 built in 1956, retired from active duty in 1971, and returned to steam in 1997.
The 13 passenger cars on the train, dating from the early 1900s, have been painstakingly restored.
The re in the steam train’s boiler must be low when it comes through the Remutuka rail tunnel, and so the train will be drawn through by a diesel-electric locomotive.
At Featherston, steam will be raised prior to departing under full steam for Carterton.
Surrey (carriage) rides, pulled by two horses, will operate from the Carterton Memorial Club (RSA) on Broadway. The surrey will travel down Broadway to the train station and back again.
The cost is $2 per child and $4 per adult. Or for an exclusive trip, $20. These rides are cash only. Proceeds from the day will go towards the Wellington Free Ambulance’s new station being built in Masterton.
The festival of stalls is a great example of partnership between the Carterton District Council and the Lions Club of Carterton. The Council organises the road closure, waste disposal, and putting the area back to rights at the end of the day. The Lions Club organises the stalls: “a job which starts in May each year,” says Heather Smith. Heather supports her husband Grant, a Lions member, to call for applications for the stalls, to allocate the sites to them, and to accept payment.
“The club has an arrangement with Upper Hutt,” she says. “They have a market fair on the Saturday before ours.”
“That means stallholders who come from all over the country can do two days back-to-back.
Half of the proceeds from the stalls are donated by the Lions Club to the Council to help defray its costs on the day. “The other half is used by the club for its many community-focused projects,” says Lions Club President Pascoe Reynolds.
The Lions meet for a meal and to hear a speaker at the Carterton Club on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, at 6.30pm. “It’s a great way to make friends and socialise,” says Drew Blair, the club’s membership director. “Our focus as a club is on mucking in, being hands-on, and doing communitybased projects that bene t our local children, families, and businesses. Come and meet us. Everyone is welcome.”
For more information about the stalls, contact Grant or Heather Smith on smithspread@xtra.co.nz.
To nd out about membership of the Lions Club, contact Drew Blair on 021 0866 6228.
Wai Art and the Da odil Festival have long had an association. The Wai Art Show, at the Carterton Events Centre, runs from 9am to 5pm from 8 to 10 September. This is one weekend you won’t want to miss.
incredible artistic ability in the Wairarapa and beyond.
The show gets bigger every year, and now - thanks to a grant from WBS - features a $1,500 prize pool including a Youth Award judged by Ian Chapman, a talented and established Wairarapa artist who also manages King Street Artworks.
the art away with you as you pay for it. Ngarie Kearney, the talented artist behind Burnt O erings, has donated a beautiful wooden breadboard (see photo). Anyone who makes a purchase at the show goes in the draw for the piece.
Road closures and parking
Road closures will be in place from 6am through to 4pm, Sunday 10 September.
packaging so that it can be recycled or composted. Attendees on the day can help by bringing their own water bottles or co ee cups, and by sorting their waste into the di erent bins.”
“Run by the Wai Art Trust and established with the primary aim of supporting and promoting Wairarapa artists, this will be the trust’s 17th show,” spokesperson AnnaMarie Kingsley said.
The show has gone through several rebrandings from Absolutely Fabulous Art Sale, Fab Wai Art, the Big Wai Art Show, and now the Wai Art Show. This evolution has moved from a focus on sales to one that showcases the
“Encouraging younger artists to exhibit is key to the diversity and longevity of the Wai Art Show. The prize will hopefully boost young artists’ con dence and motivation to participate,” trustee Jo Lysaght said.
The number and diversity of artists wanting to participate has grown so much that the art has been separated into 2D and 3D this year: 2D art in the auditorium and 3D in the Rangitahi Hub.
All the artworks in the show
“Wai Art acknowledges John and Kathleen Gordon and Jane Giles, trustees from the outset,” Anna-Marie says. Also acknowledged are Tracy Lysaght for giving the show a huge push in the beginning, Paulette Harris for her excellent marketing and branding of Wai Art, and Robyn Cherry Campbell for getting the show to the next level in terms of visitor numbers and art sales.
A big shout out is given to: “all the wonderful talented artists and volunteers who have participated over the years and
Carterton District Council is serious about waste minimisation. “Our solid waste bylaws require any event with over 1,000 people attending to submit a waste minimisation plan,” Cody Field says, “including detail about what volume and types of waste are expected and steps to minimise waste going to land ll.” Cody is the Regional Zero Waste Community Coordinator. For the Da odil Festival, the council has teamed up with Nonstop Solutions to minimise waste.
“Together, we’re focusing on sorting waste into compost (food scraps, bamboo forks, napkins etc), recyclable materials (cans, plastics and so on), and general waste,” Sophie Brooker says. Sophie is the co-founder and chief operating o cer for Wellingtonbased Nonstop Solutions.
Wairarapa has some great recycling businesses, and the festival’s recyclables can be taken there. Local composting options are more limited and so the Nonstop Solutions team will take the compostables back over the hill with them to Wellington. The team will sort through all the bags of waste by hand at the end of the event to ensure there is no crosscontamination between the three types of waste.
There will be limited parking in Carterton on Sunday 10 September. And when you do park, you can expect to do a little walking. If possible, catch public transport, carpool, or get dropped o .
There is no parking available at the da odil picking and anyone arriving in their own car will be turned away. Catch a free shuttle instead.
to Ruth Carter, who has been with us since the very rst show and is still manning the front desk capably, e ciently, and with enormous kindness.” Entry is by gold coin.
According to the Ministry for the Environment, more than 300,000 tonnes of food scraps are sent to Aotearoa New Zealand’s land lls every year, making up about 22 percent of all land ll emissions. They rot and produce methane, a powerful and bad greenhouse gas.
“We’re all on a journey to being more sustainable,” Sophie says. “Food vendors are switching out their
“Taking small steps towards minimising waste and asking people to change how they consume things is what will all add up to make a di erence,” Sophie and Cody agree. “It’s just one plastic straw, said eight billion people,” Cody adds.
Check out www.nonstopsolutions.
co.nz for more information about waste minimisation or email events@nonstopsolutions.co.nz.
You can also follow Nonstop Solutions on Facebook and Instagram.
www.cdc.govt.nz/daffodil
