Judging

Today the Yorkshire In Bloom judges came to see Pudsey. We think it went okay; all the areas we showed them were looking good, there were Pudsey In Bloom posters up everywhere and it was even a nice sunny day.

Weeding

Today and over the weekend we did some weeding and litter picking. We hadn't finished weeding the beds on Lowtown when we planted them so we did that today; there were only a few bits of grass so it did not take long.

Posters

Members of the group delivered the posters made by the Lowtown Primary School pupils to shops and houses around Pudsey today. They are now up absolutely everywhere: Pudsey centre, all down Lowtown, Robin Chase, Spinners Chase and all the sites we will be showing the judges.

Lowtown

We finished planting the seating area on Lowtown today; it is now full of perennials in shades or pink, purple, orange and yellow.

We planted rudbeckia 'Goldsturm', geum 'Lady Stratheden', penstemon 'Rondo', penstemon 'Husker Red', achillea 'Cerise Queen', knautia 'Melton Pastels', potentilla 'Miss Willmott' and kniphofia hybrids. These, along with the grasses and heucheras we planted earlier, should be colourful, low maintainance and attractive to both people and wildlife. We just have to wait for them to flower now.

There are already some daffodils, which are in full bloom at the moment. The bed on the left (below) has them all in a big clump so when they have finished flowering we will lift and separate these. We are also planning to add more bulbs in autumn.

Again lots of people stopped to talk to us. We gave all our plant pots and trays away to a local gardener too.

Plants!

Today we bought the rest of the plants for the seating area on Lowtown so we should be able to plant them tomorrow. We bought 101 perennials to add to the grassses and heucheras.

Planting

We planted loads more plants today! First the hemerocallis in the beds in front of the leisure centre.
We planted several different orange and yellow varieties such as 'Corky', 'Mauna Loa', 'Bitsy', 'Eenie Meenie' and 'Bonanza'

They are small at the moment but should get lots of flowers in summer. Both beds look great already even though it is still March.

Next we planted the beds around the car park. Previously they'd had more weedy wallflowers, although this one had had some primulas added too so at least there were some flowers.

We left in some of the bedding in the gaps until the plants grow. We planted a stipa gigantea, a libertia peregrinans, 3 libertia ixioides 'Gold Finger', some eryngium agavifolium and some pink hemerocallis.

This was the other bed before. More wallflowers but a giant phormium too.

In this one we planted 2 libertia peregrinans 'Gold Leaf' 3 eryngium agavifolium and 2 hemerocallis 'Corky'

All the new plants have interesting flowers or foliage and we have gone for strong colour combinations so these beds should look really striking. We have picked plants suited to the conditions so they should all grow well.

Planting

We started the seating area on Lowtown today. We don't have all the plants yet but we planted the grasses and heucheras. We used 6 stipa gigantea, 6 ampelodesmos mauritanica, 7 stipa arundinacea, 6 heuchera 'Green Spice' and 4 heuchera 'Frosted Violet'. Just 100 flowering perennials left to do now!

Next we started planting the beds in front of the leisure centre. Previously they had puny little wallflowers and weeds in them.

We have replaced them with shade-loving perennials and ferns that will be much happier here. They look better already!

This was the bed at the other side; it was possibly even worse!

We got nearly all the plants in today. We planted polystichum munitum, polypodium vulgare, geum 'Cooky', dianella 'Tas Red', heuchera 'Melting Fire' and heuchera 'Frosted Violet'.

Lots of people stopped to talk to us while we were planting and we got lots of positive comments. The heucheras were much admired and several people mentioned that they were glad to see perennials being used instead of the same old annuals everywhere.

The beds look pretty good already but we still have some hemerocallis to add.

planting containers

Today we finished planting the containers in Pudsey centre. 2 plants had been stolen from a container by the park so we removed a prostrate rosemary from the container by the market (which had 3) to replace them. We had asked the council to remove the old shrubs from the planter by the bank but they had also removed the mahonia from the one by the market so we replaced that with an upright rosemary.

After rearranging all the plants the containers looked great again, especially now the daffodils are starting to flower.

This was the container by the bank before; the shrubs were very leggy -

We have replaced them with shade loving plants because the container is under a tree. We used a polystichum munitum, 2 polypodium vulgare, a carex 'Evergold' and a ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens.

We also started taking photographs of the town for the portfolio, however, we didn't get many because it started raining!

We have also found out our judging date, the 8th of April.

Meeting

Today we decided to do beds in front of leisure centre as well as the area on Lowtown. They currently have puny little wallflowers in so they desperately need replanting. We'll use perennials and ferns.

We have started to received money from businesses for summer hanging baskets.

Walk around Pudsey

Some members of the group met today to walk around Pudsey to see what is looking good and what needs improving.