Preparing for South West in Bloom

Last year Old Town Residents Association entered their 6 community gardens for Britain in Bloom under the RHS's It's Your Neighbourhood, or IYN scheme along with various other community groups in Swindon under the tutelage of Richard Beale, a Britain in Bloom judge.
 Interestingly Richard judged Kingsbridge's entry to Britain in Bloom  this year, and their Chair, Graham Price, was one of our judges.
Since showing Richard Beale round our 6 gardens, and having attended a BiB confernece in Chippenham, I had a much better idea of improvements we needed to make this year. We have held regular working parties every month, and sometimes more often since last year's judging, the progress we made can be followed via our OTRA Gardens Facebook page and also the South Swindon in Bloom Facebook page, but there's no doubt about it, there was a last minute flurry of activity.
The gardens are assessed on planting, community involvement and environment. There were several things I knew we had to try and achieve before the judging which took place on 11 July.
Firstly all beds needed plaques to announce we looked after the beds, and also a South Swindon Parish plaque to acknowledge the support they have given us. There were lots of improvements to be made at the Mr Cod bed, the benches needed refurbishment, the wall behind the benches was in need of rendering and painting, and the junction box was covered in messy graffiti. We managed to solve all these problems with teamwork before the judging deadline of 11 July. Particular thanks to Carole Bent who was very helpful in encouraging local businesses to consider how they could help by making improvements to the areas surrounding the beds, and helped them to appreciate the beneficial effect of the gardens.
Onto the plaques, here's Toby Robson with one of his wonderful plaques made from recycled aluminium sourced from washing machines and saucepans:

 Here's a closer look:

and a photo of the team who were there for the ceremonial plaque installation:

The area looks so much better with a clean wall behind the benches, here are Mr Saleem, owner of Mr Cod and one of his staff:

They wanted me to have a photo taken with him as well in front of the wall

And a couple of before and after of the benches:

 You can see the poor state of the wall in these before and after photos

This is what the wall looked like after being painted, it was so good that I thought I'd get the tree stumps out before planting the area, but they defeated me and I called ion Tim to help. Here he is caught in a nice action shot:

While we were there, we were supplied with hot drinks and cake from Baila, much appreciated

Here we are sitting down to drink the coffee

and here's a photo of Salvia 'Amistad' we planted behind the bench, there will be lots more in there when it's wetter

It would be nothing without the teamwork which has gone on over the last year. Here are a couple of photos of the groups who have met up

This one's at the Marriott roundabout:

We will know the result of our IYN entry on 11 October at the autumn conference. 

In the meantime, we need to keep working on the gardens, if you would like to know when the working parties meet, please contact us via our Facebook page.