Floral St Peter Port

The details of the 2010 Parish Competition, and the entry form, are now available on the Competition page. There are new categories this year.

Good luck if you decide to enter!

IMG ~ Private garden winner, 2009, Mr and Mrs Rumens.

Spring is here, it’s the perfect time to get out into the garden (to get it ready for our competition?) in the sunshine. But, we know it can be a bit hard to know where to start – and expensive!

So, we’ve put together a short list of links to advice and even some free seeds to get you going.

If you know of any more offers available, or have a favourite “tips” site, please link to it in the comments. All the links were working at the time of posting – but if you spot a broken, or expired link, do tell us.

• The BBC have a free seeds offer.
• The RHS have lots of suggestions, advice, and sometimes freebies.
• Found something you don’t recognise? Try “What on Earth?“. (And get free seeds!)
• Garden Freebies does what it says on the tin!
• Homebase have a gardening club with loads of advice, video guides, and competitions.
• They also have a free planner to download.
• B&Q currently have a free planner available to pick up, and several offers on seeds.

Finally, the Floral St Peter Port Committee have a lot of knowledge, and can also provide practical help. Please get in touch if you feel we might be able to help you (St Peter Port only!)

Img ~ Gardening tools clip art.

The committee are keeping a weather eye on the situation on the North Plantation, and will of course be doing all we can to prevent the total paving over of one of Town’s beautiful green spaces.

If you’d like to view the plans, or write to the Environment Department to object, the reference is: FULL/2009/1754 (A411190005-P130P). The application was published in the press on the 24.07.09, but is also displayed on site.

In better news, the rabbit is back on the plantation!

IMG ~ The new flowers on the plantation, planted by parish school children.

Phew! What a fortnight: we were judged for Floral Guernsey, went to the awards night for Floral Guernsey, judged our own Parish Competition, and had the awards night for that! Now we can put our feet up and enjoy our lovely parish for a while.

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped us this year (see the sponsors page). Thanks to your hard work, we maintained standards – we got Silver Gilt again!

Congratulations to all who entered our competition, the judges found it very hard to choose the winners. The full results are here.

Img ~ Celebratory cakes, served at the buffet on our Parish Competition awards night.

Well, the big day is upon us once again. Today is our judging day in the Parish Competition, and we are very excited to show off our parish to the judges. If you see us out, give us a smile and a wave. If you see any litter – bin it!

As part of the judging route, we have a display in the tourist information centre, showing a little bit of all we have done this year – feel free to drop in and have a look, it will be up all day today and until around four pm tomorrow. Also on display is work by local school children in the Bedell Group Little Green Fingers Schools’ Project.

Best of luck to all the other parishes who are competing: we know you have worked hard too!

Image ~ Crossed fingers

The details of the 2009 Parish Competition are now available. See the competition page for more information and an entry form.

If you were out and about in Town today, you may have spotted work going on, on the North Plantation. Jenny Tasker, Senior Constable of St Peter Port, was there to kick things off, and got her hands dirty too – although she had to enlist the help of the press photographer!

Thanks to co-operation between Floral St Peter Port, the Constables, States Works, the Environment Department, Floral Guernsey, and HSBC, the permissions, plans, and pennies are finally in place to give the plantation a much needed makeover. The dead plants are being removed, and by the summer we will have a tranquil, light, green space, with seating and pathways.

Video ~ Tree sawing by a constable and a press photographer.

Spring has sprung, all the green shoots are starting to show, and the St Peter Port Floral Committee has come out of hibernation! We’ve spent the winter dreaming, and have got plenty of plans to polish up the parish a bit more this year. Stay tuned for details, and as always, help, comments and ideas are welcome.

Image ~ The 2009 logo!

To be honest, there’s not a lot going on at the moment. We’re all down the beach, enjoying a well deserved break… but we can’t switch our brains off! So while it’s too hot to do any real work, join us in having a think.
 
Are there any grot spots around town you’d like to see us tackle? Any areas you think need a little TLC to perk them up? Any fantastic ideas you’ve had but don’t have the man/woman power… or the money? Please let us know, in the comments here, or on facebook, or via our email contact form.
 
Next year’s festival week dates have been set by those who do that kind of thing:

Spring ~ 25th April
Summer ~ 4th July
Autumn ~ 26th September

Put them in your diary now! This year Lesley took people on a guided walk through town, approximating the judging route, and highlighting some interesting snippets of history. We hope to repeat that next year, but what else could we do?
 
If you fancy having a go at the walk yourself, a printed version is available at the tourist office. You never know, you might learn something!

The parish competition awards were held last Monday.
 
Congratulations to all who entered, but especially to the winners: the Tourist Information Centre, the Harbour Lights / White D’Or, Gary Guilmoto, and the residents of Maison Collivet.
 
You can find the full results on the parish competition page.
 
Image ~ One of our judges inspecting the Rocquettes Hotel.