Society to name garden after Lady Veronica

The PNG Orchid society will name its newly constructed National Orchid Gardens at 16-Mile outside Port Moresby after Lady Veronica Somare. This was announced by the Orchid society President Justin Tkatchenko when receiving a cheque for K443,000 from the National Gaming Control Board (NGCB) through its community development programme yesterday. “This project has been made possible by the Pacific Adventist University by allowing us to make developments on the new recreational health and wildlife parks on this land. “The wildlife park project is in its early stages and has been sponsored by PNG Gardner to basically showcase the PNG wildlife that we have in PNG, like the birds of Paradise, the bird wing butterfly and the different parrots,” Mr Tkatchenko said. “As part of this beautiful setup, we have incorporated the new National Orchid Gardens and as part of the naming rights, it will be called the Lady Veronica Orchid Gardens.” He said this was set up because the Orchid society requested to have a place to showcase the orchids of PNG especially when the Orchid society was the champion of Southeast Asia, by winning three major gold awards and trophies in China, Thailand and Singapore. However, Mr Tkatchenko was disappointed with the Tourism Promotion Authority for not giving any funding to the Orchid project although the Orchid society was attracting many tourists. NGCB chairman Leonard Louma while presenting the cheque to the society said they were more than willing to help non-profit organisations like the Orchid society which was making a difference to beautify and improve the standard of living. He said that there were still undiscovered orchid plants in PNG, so he challenged the Orchid society to host a nation wide competition as to who would discover the most orchid plants that were yet to be found in the world.