Department of Agronomy conducted a one-day workshop under the title of “Natural Flower Arrangements and dry flower production techniques” on 23.03.2022, Wednesday from 8.30 am to 4.00 pm for women headed families. Arranging flowers is an expression of creativity and a highly valued art form. It can be a part-time or full-time profession with minimum investment, depending on availability of time. Dried flowers are a form of flower preservation, meaning that a flower’s beauty and shape is preserved, so it can be used as a more permanent home decoration or a meaningful gift, or even as an alternative to fresh wedding flowers. Moreover, to these, it can be done as business. By considering the demand and marketing opportunities for the flowers and floral based business, this workshop was planned to organize under the AHEAD project (AHEAD/RA2/ELTAELSE/JFN/FAG/OVAA/08/ WS5) to facilitate and motivate the women headed families through providing the required skills and knowledge to start a small-scale business for sustainable income.
Welcome address of this workshop was delivered by Dr. K. Pakeerathan, AHEAD coordinator, Faculty of Agriculture, following that special address was given by Dr. (Mrs). Loha Pradheeban, Head, Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture. Prof. (Mrs.) Sivamathy Sivachandiran, Professor in Agronomy and Dr. (Mrs). Sarujaa Selvaskanthan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Jaffna conducted in this workshop as resource persons.
Techniques on selection of flowers and foliage, basics of natural flower arrangements, dehydration of flowers and other suitable plant parts using different equipment and making of value-added products was explained in detail by the resource persons. Then the demonstrations on making natural flower arrangement using different main flowers (using local flowers as well), filler flowers and cut foliage, different dehydration techniques and making of different value-added products using the dried plant parts were explained to the participants.
