Bloomin’ Success

After weeks of heat and sunshine, a cooler day on Friday July 19 saw Immediate Past President Les Sheppard go along to the Canon Roche Hall to attend the prizegiving for the winners of the Billericay in Bloom competition.

Not only that, but also to present the prizes for the class we regularly sponsor - ‘Best Back Garden’ class.

The hall was crowded and we were all entertained by a continuous slide show of photos of the 60 approx. gardens which took part this year. Judges this year were Robert Wiseman, who made an introductory speech, and Mike Taylor.

Encouraging Next Generation Gardeners

First were the awards for the best school garden (won by Quilters School), then best school vegetable garden (won by Buttsbury Infants School), and best school wildlife garden (won again by Buttsbury Infants School).  IPP Les was delighted at these successes as Quilters is the home of one of our RotaKids Clubs, and he is a school governor at Buttsbury! 

This was followed by individual children’s categories, ‘best garden in a recycled container’, 'best herb garden', etc. which was organised on a school by school basis. For each school the 3rd, 2nd and 1st place winners were announced first, and the winners proudly went up to receive their trophies, followed by ‘highly commended’ medals for the other entrants.

The adult classes followed, including best front garden, best commercial premises, and, our class, best back garden.

This year for the first time, all the prize winners were actually there to receive their prize certificates, with the winner receiving his winners silver cup too.

Our prizes were won by:
1st. - John Dowsett
2nd.- Keith Thacker
3rd. - Melvyn Brown

The proceedings were skilfully compèred by Councillor Jim Devlin, aided by Town Clerk Deborah Tonkiss, and Councillor Moira Moore, with citizen of the year Jo Adshead stepping in to give the prizes when a sponsor was unable to be there that evening!

After the prize giving and the photos of each winner, all the prize winners were called back for a combined photograph.

All the sponsors of the various classes were thanked for their support of the event and we all look forward to another successful competition next year.