She made the remarks Friday at the opening of the Hong Kong Flower Show at Victoria Park, as she sent her warm welcome to the 130 participating organizations from 11 countries -- a record number of organizations, with even greater variety of plants on display.

She said the event will enable citizens and tourists to appreciate and purchase flowers and plants.

About 2,000 students and 500 teachers were taking their appreciation one step further. Before the official ceremony started, they were already seen sitting in clusters around the uniquely decorated garden plots and making use of their artistic skills to capture on drawing paper the beauty of their cheerful looks and the eye-catching blossoms.

But none of their watercolor palettes, crayons, color pencils, however diverse in their sets of available color registers, can compare to the subtle melange of beauty afforded by the creations of the Nature.

Even snapshots from a top-notch photographer would come out as a suggestion of the eye-catching red roses, the smiling sunflowers, the pinkish Gerberas, and the brilliant strings of Golden Shower, just to name a few.

Fine arts teacher of Wai Yin College Wong Wing Yee said that she was making use of such rare opportunity and had brought her 10 selected students to learn to draw in the actual environment.

"And to require them to capture various types of flowers is, in fact, quite a challenge to them. It is a marvelous experience too," she said.

Although the theme of this year's show is on the elegant Phalaenoposis and other orchids, the message being conveyed is much broader -- to capture the spirit of green policy as championed by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa.

In his Jan. 8 address, Tung said he would implement a comprehensive greening policy for Hong Kong through the collaboration of different departments and with the input of experts and specialists to develop the most sustainable greening program for the areas.

And of course, individual residents are also encouraged to take their own steps to learn how to be a green thumb and keep their flats green by pot plants, available from rows and rows of stalls at the show.

One such stall has been set up jointly by the Shanghai Horticultural Group and the Shanghai Landscaping Administration Bureau. Tang Zhiyuan, director and vice general manager of the Group said that the stall is promoting a number of indigenous Chinese plants, including the Pseudolarix Kaempferi Gord, a kind of pine tree originally growing in valleys in Zhejiang Province.

(People's Daily March 8, 2003)