Hastings Blossom Festival
 

• After a meeting in March 1950, Greater Hastings Inc, was formed to promote Hastings, attract visitors and assert the town's rivalry with Napier which had just become a city.

• With support from retailers and fruitgrowers, Greater Hastings Inc. organised the first Blossom Week Festival to mark the start of the 1950-51 fruit season.

• Streets and shop windows were bedecked with paper blossoms.

• The highlight of the week was the parade with 41 decorated floats.

• People danced in the streets to band music until around 10.30pm.

• With the success of the first festival, it then became an annual event, attracting up to 50,000 people some years.

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to enlarge.

• Hastings became a city in 1956 and the Blossom Festival was incorporated into the celebrations.
• Special excursion trains and buses travelled through the night from Wellington, the Wairarapa, the Manawatu and Gisborne bringing in thousands of visitors to the new city.
   
• From 1957 a Queen Carnival was held to select the Blossom Queen to ride on one of the floats in the parade, with the runners up, her "princesses".
• Decorated arches were erected across each block of shops in Heretaunga Street.
• Competitions were held for best decorated shop windows.
• Floats became more elaborate year by year, with many hours being spent designing, building and decorating (in secrecy). 
• There were two classes of floats: artificial blossoms and natural blossoms, with fierce competition in both.
• Bands and marching teams also featured in the parades.
• In 1960 rain delayed the parade. Many visitors sought shelter in bars and brawls broke out in the street, some quelled by fire hoses.
• This was dubbed "The Second Battle of Hastings" and was even reported overseas.
   
• The effort involved in decorating floats, streets and shop windows, was telling and the standard of the earlier years was hard to sustain.
• The last Blossom Festival of this era was held in 1972.
   
• In the 1980s Blossom Festivals were reinstated and has now grown into a ten day event of music and drama performances, a market, a carnival and, of course, the parade.
• The modern parade has all the elements of the early parades, and now includes participation from many cultural groups, celebrating our diversity.
• The fruit trees still blossom and new lambs play in the paddocks, but now the vineyards and olive groves are budding up as well.  The Hastings District is a wonderful place to be in spring.
   
• Sources:
  City of the plains : A history of Hastings by M. B. Boyd
  Town and country - the history of Hastings and district by Matthew Wright

Above: Former Blossom Queens took part in the 2006 parade, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hastings becoming a city.

Above: Frimley School float 2005.

Links:
Hastings Blossom Festival - event information
Hastings District Council - Picture Galleries  - online photo collection.

We would love to receive your written memories of the Blossom Festival - making floats, decorating the shops and arches, watching the parades, the Queen Carnivals etc.  Please email us at reference1@hdc.govt.nz or ring the Hastings Library 06 871 5180 and ask for the Reference Desk.