Meeting

Today we discussed preparations for judging.

Hanging baskets

The hanging baskets we ordered from the council have finally been put up on the Town Hall and the leisure centre. The ones on the Town Hall are mostly white and purple; the others are a bit more garish.

Greenside Primary School

Members of the group were invited to Greenside Primary School for the unveiling of their new mural of Pudsey Park the pupils have painted.

Mulching

Members of the group have mulched the beds in front of the leisure centre with bark chippings. We got the bark chippings for free.

An article appeared on the Pudsey Times website about our art competition for children today too. http://www.pudseytoday.co.uk/news/Pudsey-in-Bloom-unleashes-its.4183301.jp

Win a cactus garden!

We are organising an art competition for children. The theme is 'Flowers in Pudsey'. Anyone under 16 can enter and you can do a drawing or painting.

3 winners will each receive a cactus garden and a book.

Hand your entry in at the library before the 2nd of July. Please write your name, age, address and phone number on the back. Pictures should be A4 sized or smaller.

Winning entries will be displayed at the library and shown to the Yorkshire in Bloom judges. We will put some of the pictures on the blog too.

meeting

At our meeting today we discussed the route for the summer judging, our art competition and buying some new containers.

Tripe baths

The old bedding was removed from the tripe baths today and replaced with some interesting foliage plants: ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens (black grass) and 2 native ferns, asplenium trichomanes and asplenium scolopendrium.

These are all nice tough plants and look striking together. The ferns used are species which can be seen growing in walls around the town.

Leisure centre beds weeded

There were a lot of nettle seedlings and we didn't bring gloves but we didn't get stung too much!


The plants in these beds are all doing really well. They get the sun in the evening and the red heuchera leaves glow. They are starting to flower too. The geums flowered all spring but are still going, and should get even more flowers later in the year. The hemerocallis will probably flower in about a month.

The rest of the troughs planted

The remaining barrier troughs have now been planted up. Drought tolerant plants have been used in these to save money and be more environmentally friendly. We are not going to water these at all.

We have used the following alpines and succulents:

sempervivums (red or green rosettes of leaves, pink flowers)

penstemon pinifolius (bright orange flowers)

silene 'Druetts variegated' (white flowers, white and green leaves)

armeria maritima 'Nifty Thrifty' (bright pink flowers, variegated foliage)

calandrinia umbellata (bright pink flowers)

phlox subulata 'Emerald blue' (purple-blue flowers)

saxifraga 'Southside seedling group' (white flowers with red spots)

sedum hispanicum glaucum (pink leaves and flowers)

sedum spathulifolium purpureum (yellow flowers, purple leaves)

and some mixed sedums

We have used some striking combinations of plants and they are looking good already.

Judging date

We found out our summer judging date today: Tuesday 8th July.

planting

The barrier troughs were planted today; they now contain fuchsias, gazanias, petunias and pelargoniums.

barrier troughs

The old bedding was removed from the barrier troughs (in the rain!) and the compost replaced ready for replanting.