A BLOOMING good day out is being offered with a floral family fun event at a York museum.

The activities, at York Castle Museum's Raindale Mill next Tuesday, will highlight the plight of our vanishing cornfield flowers and launch a summer of school holiday fun.

Raindale Mill is a 19th century working water mill next to the River Foss, close to Castle Mills Bridge, and demonstrations of millers' and farmers' tools from times gone by are carried out daily throughout the school holidays.

On Tuesday, extra activities will be held at the mill to mark the museum's Cornfield Flower Day.

Flowers, such as cornflowers, scarlet pimpernel and shepherd's needle, used to be a common sight in the county's cornfields 50 years ago, but today many are rare, or even extinct.

Visitors will be able to look at examples of the flowers, brought along by experts from the Ryedale Folk Museum, at Hutton-le-Hole, who are working to conserve these endangered species and will be able to talk about the particular flowers in detail.

Families will also be able to have a go at fun art activities, ranging from making cards and bookmarks from pressed flower petals, to making their own giant wildflowers, using colourful paper and paint, to stick on to a cornfield backdrop.

Griselda Goldsbrough, community arts co-ordinator for York Museums Trust, said: "We hope the flowers and their plight will inspire people to get artistic and have a blooming good day."

Other activities will include demonstrations of historic quern stones, which were used to grind corn for thousands of years before mills, and the chance to have a go on a replica quern stone.

Updated: 10:24 Thursday, July 22, 2004