Plenty to cheer for the town as Anglia in Bloom goes online

The emergency regulations have impacted Bury in Bloom’s plans (along with everyone else) and I am sad to report that the main Anglia in Bloom competition has been postponed for 2020. This therefore means many – although not all – of our 2020 projects are suspended even though most of the preparations were complete and some had already started. However, an ever-resourceful Anglia in Bloom team have suggested alternative ways of submitting entries and have introduced an “online” competition for 2020 and suggested 11 categories ranging from “Best Local Authority Planting” to “Best Display using Recycled Materials” and submitting entries of each with three photographs with a 50-word description of each. We are therefore looking at how best we can take part before the July 31 final entry date. Judging will take place in August. One of our original 2020 entries was to be the “Certificate of Merit” scheme in the “Special Awards” nomination and we hope this can now be entered in the “online” competition under the “Best Community Effort”. Of course this depends on emergency regulations having been eased enough to allow the scheme to go ahead in July. We can take that decision in late June when we know. Jane Hamblin who co-ordinates the Merit Scheme hopes she is much closer to having sufficient judges although she still needs more – we need a minimum of 80 and are looking for 100 as Bury St Edmunds continues to expand – so we are very keen not to stand them down before we need to. Jean Hardy, one of our dedicated volunteers and co-ordinator of “Young

Green Fingers” has decided to retire from her Bury in Bloom activities after many years and she leaves a big gap that I am desperate to try and fill. Barring a clone of Jean my ideal candidate would be someone with teaching experience, enthusiastic with children and probably recently retired. If you can say yes to even one of these please contact me on Coordinator@buryinbloom.org.uk we really want to hear from you. I mentioned “although not all projects” at the top of this piece, so what are we continuing to work on? Well, we hope to have our new website up and running within the next month, I’m still talking to businesses about locations for storing harvested rainwater as we aim to water our hanging baskets using harvested water (You would be completely amazed how much rainwater can be harvested off even a modest sized roof) and we continue to promote “Roots in The Community” a perfect self-isolation project for 2020.

David Irvine Bury in Bloom co-ordinator