Green Fingers award ceremony

We are grateful to our sponsors, Denbury Homes, Care UK & Greene King, without their support this event could not have taken place.

The annual Green Fingers award ceremony took place on Tuesday the 8th of October and this year was hosted at Ashlar House.

After 4 years as Green Fingers head coordinator Fiona Till did not believe this year’s event could eclipse last year which was in itself a huge success. This year however had a better attendance reaching 120 people more awards and in Ashlar House a venue which lent itself to the numbers involved and the mixture of young and old participants.

Emma Fisher representing the Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal gave an interesting and informative speech linking her own interest and love of gardening with the theme for this year namely Theatre.

The standard again this year was very high and this year’s assessment was modelled on the RHS awards system, gold, Silver and bronze. There were 11 Gold awards given out 6 Silver awards, 9 Bronze awards. This high level of achievement challenged Fiona and her team when judging the individual participants.

The overall winner for Senior Green Fingers was Nowton Court residential home, most inspirational teacher went to Mr Dave Morris from Tollgate Primary, up and coming gardeners of the year went to Sabine Westgate & Lenny Horn both from Sybil Andrews Academy. The young Green Fingers overall winner went to the Bungalow SEND setting in Canterbury Green. A complete list of all the awards is below.

Fiona is stepping down but has now handed it over to a very capable team who worked with her for the last two years and is thrilled that it is carrying on. She is particularly pleased that her efforts to introduce both the Care homes and Schools to each other has resulted in Schools paring up with Care homes and establishing an ongoing relationship which has benefitted both sides.

Chris Wiley, Bury in Bloom Coordinator, said “Green Fingers is an important arm of Bury in Bloom and the quality of entries every year seems to get better and better. I would like to say a big thank you to Fiona for her dedication and enthusiasm to make Green Fingers what it is today. We were very sad when Fiona announced that she was stepping down, but we have no doubts that her successors will have the same level of passion and drive to continue this much anticipated scheme.”

Denbury Homes, Care UK & Greene King were the sponsors who without their support the event could not have taken place and this was hugely appreciated.