Even for a non-gardener such as myself the sight of thousands of daffodils and other spring bulbs on show each spring near the Hospital corner of the gardens gets more glorious each year.

Mix in all the blossoms and you have one of Christchurch’s great annual reasons why we have been rated as one of the greatest Garden Cities in the world.

It’s one of the things we do incredibly well as a city that maybe needs a little more recognition and praise than we generally hand out to ourselves. It would be nice if we didn’t have to wait for some visiting writer or ar tist to capture this amazing sight before we realised what a true gem we have every spring.

It is one of the rites of spring for countless Christchurch families that increasingly, like other public events, is also drawing the support of the new faces and cultures who have chosen to come here to live. I think that increasingly as a city we are going to have to face the fact that the wider world community is discovering the great way of life we enjoy here.

The Botanic Gardens is one of the major natural assets that is helping us as a city draw so much favourable attention. While spring is the time when optimism tends to increase there is much for Christchurch to be optimistic about.

Our decision some years back as a city to make a major effort to attract conferences and conventions here has paid major dividends. We are now the second major site for conferences and conventions in New Zealand. Some of the business we are now attracting for conferences have major implications and potentials for the already thriving local economy.

Recently we hosted the hugely powerful Asian Retailers Convention and exhibition. I am told that this group of major retailers from New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Fiji are jointly responsible for $1000 billion worth of retail business every year. Such a group has such enormous economic clout that the potential for our city, business community and broader community from this visit are just huge.

It gave us a chance through the accompanying exhibition to showcase some of the many products that our trading city produces for the international market. It was the biggest opportunity that New Zealand manufacturers and service providers have had, or ever will have, to meet with the heads and buyers from leading Asian general merchandise chains and supermarkets from North, South and Southeast Asia.

The convention was an amazing opportunity to showcase our wares to our closest neighbours in the world community. It was a major coup for this city that deserves recognition as a major event in our commercial history.

The economic influence and clout of some of the participants was just staggering. I met one Japanese retail head who it was explained to me had “several” multi-storey outlets in Tokyo. When asked him how many in Tokyo he said “Oh, seven or eight.” He was just one of many major figures in the Asian business community who came here and were hugely impressed with both how Christchurch looks and how it operates.

It is worth noting that the organisers of the convention, which had the theme of refresh”, said in their publicity material that the convention attractions included the fresh location of Christchurch during spring, this is New Zealand at its best!” They are right, of course.

They will in turn be followed by thousands of new visitors from Australia when Virgin New Zealand’s Pacific Blue service starts their new cut-price fares from Brisbane to Christchurch and back.

This was yet another great spring sign for this city... when we got the news confirmed that this new airline would be based in Christchurch. It will bring hordes of new tourists from Australia and also make it much easier for our people to travel to Australia. As I said to the airline executives, they will have no problems basing new staff here in Christchurch.

Their problems will start when they try and move them somewhere else. People that come here find that our way of life is a hard one to give up. Especially, I would imagine, in spring, when the Gardens are full of blooming bulbs and blossom. Who would want to leave that! Not me, for one.