Preparations, Judging Day and the Results 2018!

Oct 18, 2018
2 min read

SSIB volunteers work hard all year round- but there’s always a particularly frantic burst of activity before judging day with lots of extra work parties and the Community Tidy Day.

This year Community Tidy Day was on June 30th, and we were pleased to see a number of Stony Stratford residents joining us to polish the planters and clean the street furniture.

Judging Day itself was on Monday July 9th, and there were tough decisions to be made about what to show the judges, and what to leave out as we couldn’t squeeze everything in to a mere two hours! The long spell of dry weather meant lots of hard work for volunteers –

taking large containers of water to recently planted flower beds to keep the flowers blooming brightly – and hard work for Alan Box, the waterer, who did way beyond the call of duty to keep the baskets well watered in the intense heat and drought.

Residents have been full of praise for the blaze of colour from the planters, baskets and the perennial beds around the town. The new Fullers Slade bed and the revamped library bed, our 10 year anniversary beds, were looking stunning; and SSIB volunteers were proud to show them off to the judges.

Judging day over, it was a long wait till we got the results at the Awards Ceremony on September 27th – but when results day came, it was well worth the wait, and we were over-the-moon to discover we’d gain a gold award yet again.

It was particularly satisfying to gain a gold award in our 10th Anniversary Year!

There were spectacular results too for our 2 It’s Your Neighbourhood Groups. The York House Community Gardens Group was assessed as ‘Outstanding’ , as was the North end Pond Group – and we were very proud of Mary Robinson and Robin Nichol, whose tireless work and inspirational ideas for the North end Pond project earned them the special Royal Horticultural Society Certificate of Distinction.