Katara general manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti with Kazakhstan ambassador Askar Shokybayev.
Katara – the Cultural Village Foundation has announced that the ongoing second Mahaseel Festival continues until Saturday, December 30.
The festival is “hugely popular and has been receiving large crowds every day, and plays an educative and vocational role in an attractive, cultural and aesthetic manner,” Katara said in a press statement yesterday.
The ‘agro-horticulture-and-poultry-produce’ festival, which opened on December 23, is being held in co-operation with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME). It has turned out to be a “big hit with locals and people of other nationalities”, the statement notes.
Among the visitors are dignitaries, including ambassadors and other officials from various diplomatic missions in Doha.
Yesterday, ambassadors Askar Shokybayev (Kazakhstan), Cristian Tudor (Romania) and Antonio Tanger Correa (Portugal) visited the festival and appreciated the ambiance at the venue – comprising flowers, fruits and vegetables.
Fresh flowers displayed in shops at Mahaseel are among the major attractions and a large number of people turn up every day to buy them, according to Katara. The vendors are offering rose seedlings at “reasonable prices”, and also available are a wide variety of flowers, plants, vegetable seedlings and shade shrubs used to decorate houses and design home gardens.
These shops contain more than 26 varieties of roses, flowers and ornamental plants, distributed according to their natural colours and forms. A lecture on ‘Home Garden Planting’ was attended by visitors on the fifth day of Mahaseel.
The festival hosts lectures on a number of topics every day. These include methods of planting seasonal flower seeds, aquatic agriculture and healthy nutrition, besides how to properly store fresh vegetables. The event is also being visited by a large number of school students, where they take part in various activities through different workshops.
Besides, there is a section for bee-keeping where the culture of bee preservation and honey production is highlighted through workshops. It is open from 9am to 10pm every day.