Jane Scripps, operations manager for the city’s Vitalise Whangarei group, came up with the idea, which has been taken up by the region and is spreading to other parts of the country.

It seems so simple: Order the plants now and pop them into the city’s floral hotspots a few weeks before the first RWC game.

Ms Sloot, operations manager for Recreational Turf Services, contracted to the Whangarei District Council to look after its gardens, parks and sports fields, can only say “I wish”.

For a start, the time when the flowers are required to look their best is on the cusp between cold and warm seasons.
Summer flowers will probably not survive the variable weather Northland can dish up at the end of winter. Likewise plants suited to cold weather will wilt in prolonged warm weather. Red tulips would be superb - but they don’t do well in Northland and keel over in warm weather.

Ms Sloot has a short list of suitable candidates, which includes bedding begonias, poppies, and possibly red salvia, marigold (which are reddish) and impatiens. Ms Sloot says an option for couple of high-profile sites is red tulips, kept in the cooler until just before the RWC, “but they are very short-lived up here and it’s an expensive option”.

Recreational Services is doing its darndest to source the 15,000-20,000 bedding plants needed but Ms Sloot says it’s not going to happen. “At the moment there aren’t the suppliers and it looks like we will have to get them down the line. There could be an opportunity here for someone in the North,” she says.

Go to northland2011.com for the updated schedule of Northland RWC events.

- Thirty applications from 21 Northland entities were lodged for the contestable $9.5 million NZ2011 Festival Lottery Fund allocated by the Lottery Grants Board and nine have won funding pending confirmation projects will go ahead.