Spring spurs on hardy annuals
April
2019
Spring is certainly upon us and as ever it is a joy to see the season's colours unfold. At this time of year our own 'annuals' are also nicely growing.
Entries in our Children's Spring 'Design a Garden' Art Competition are flooding in. For 2019 we’ve chosen cycling as the theme to link to September's UCI and we’ve asked children to design a garden shaped like a cycle wheel. The winning design will be planted in the circular flowerbed near Bettys on Montpellier Hill. Something to show the Britain in Bloom judges in August and we hope the winners will be able to join us as the judges like to see how children are encouraged to get involved. We are grateful to Harrogate Flower Shows and Harrogate Council who support this competition.
We also work with the council on our 'Blooming Business' Hanging Baskets scheme. Sadly, we’ve lost a few businesses this year but happily gained a few new ones. We’ll still see more than 125 hanging baskets outside town centre business premises on top of the 600 the council puts up in public places. Thanks to all the businesses who support this project.
This spring saw our first meeting with the newly formed Harrogate Business Improvement District together with representatives from the long-established Chamber of Trade. A very productive meeting and the BID certainly has some exciting plans.
Both bodies are supporting our inaugural Summer Shop Window competition. We were so bowled over in 2018 at the number of shops using flowers - fresh or faux - to entice shoppers that we decided to launch this new addition to our annual competitions.
We were even offered space in the BID’s first newsletter to promote the Shop Window Competition so we are hoping for an enthusiastic response.