The Hor­ti­cul­ture So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (HSTT) were win­ners of a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower show held in Lon­don in May. The win­ning dis­play fea­tured a co­coa house against back­drop of colour­ful and scenic flo­ra in the val­leys of a fine flavoured co­coa plan­ta­tion in the moun­tain­ous re­gion of Trinidad. The dis­play did not on­ly rep­re­sent the rich­ness of T&T's flo­ra but al­so was an eye open­er for choco­late en­thu­si­asts and choco­la­teers who had nev­er be­fore seen the ac­tu­al demon­stra­tion of the pro­cess­ing of fine flavoured co­coa beans amidst such a beau­ti­ful and colour­ful ar­ray of trop­i­cal flow­ers in a nat­ur­al set­ting. It was well re­ceived and was among nine flower dis­play booths award­ed gold and cho­sen from more than 600 from Eng­land, Africa, Aus­tralia, In­done­sia, the Caribbean and oth­er parts of the world.

The HSTT team of six com­prised Joan Wil­son chief de­sign­er and arranger; Sun­dar Seecha­ran, HSTT Pres­i­dent; Chan Ramkissoon, Trea­sur­er, Rose­marie James, Jan­ice Ben­jamin and Joan Hamp­ton, all man­age­ment com­mit­tee mem­bers. The cost of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a show of the mag­ni­tude of Chelsea for a team of six mem­bers in­clu­sive of trav­el, meals and lodg­ing was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $130,000 and was most­ly fund­ed by mem­bers them­selves with a very small per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship. This year the HSTT is host­ing its an­nu­al flower show, which has as its theme Earth­ly Par­adise at the Di­vali Na­gar site on Ju­ly 30 and 31 from 10 am to 6 pm. The show will be of­fi­cial­ly opened by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. There would be sev­er­al ex­ot­ic flower dis­plays, as well as plants and veg­eta­bles for sale.