Welcome to the South West in Bloom Website

Get Involved - Your first steps

Are you a village, town or city thinking of entering our In Bloom competition.  Find out more under our main competition.

Are you a group of residents, a few local neighbours wanting to improve your local streets or focus on a particular project? If so, you will fit into our "It's Your Neighbourhood" awards category. This is for resident led groups cleaning and greening up their patch, read more about neighbourhood awards.

RHS Britain In Bloom 2013 National Winners

 

We would like to congratulate all our National Britain in Bloom finalists on their fantastic achivements this year.  One category winner (Dartmouth), three Golds (Dartmouth, Newquay, Bath), three Silver Gilts (Falmouth, Bristol, St. Issey) and a Silver (Clifton)! A truely great achievement indeed but the good news does stop thier; Barry (Bath), Mike (Bristol) and Stevie (Dartmouth) all received Community Champion awards too, Dartmouth Young People's Award and Bath Incredible Edibles.

SW In Bloom Presentation Event, Truro

Congratulations to Truro and all of you for making this fantastic event.  Our thanks must go to our guest of honour, Bob Sweet and our sponsors Viridor, Plantscape, Amberol and Mole Seeds, not forgetting our judges who like all of you, give many hundreds of hours voluntarily.  The cathedral made a fantastic setting for this truely magical day.  Our continued thanks go to all our entries who all do so many fantastic things year round to make the area we live and work in so special!

SW In Bloom 2013 Winners

Check out the results for this year's (2013) South West In Bloom Competition and the It's your neighbourhood

 

How To Order Your Photo's; South West In Bloom Presentation Event, Truro

• Go to www.thisiscornwall.co.uk
• Click the green photos tag (it will drop down to buy a photo)
• Click that
• On the left hand side of the page find SOUTH WEST IN BLOOM (This contains all the photos from the Cathedral and Town Hall events)

Happy shopping!

New Pennant Awards Introduced for 2013!

For 2013 we have introduced a pennant which has proved extremely successful.  It is something Nationally the RHS are looking to introduce and will be looking at the trials regions are running locally.

Entry is free for all 'new' entries. There is no portfolio.  As main entries there is 1/4 hr for press and 1/4 for a presentation (if entries which to do one).  For the village to small town there is an additional 1.5hrs and town to cities additional 2.5hrs.

The new category is aimed at BIDS, town center managers, groups that we lost due to the change in judging criteria and encouraging more villages to be involved.  The criteria is more relaxed and there is less to meet.  The awards are slightly different to reflect this, they will be pennants.

Media Opportunities 2014

Next year is the 50th anniversary of In Bloom. There is potentially an opportunity with a National Newspaper to do a pull-out on Bloom looking back over the years, profiling interesting / inspirational characters and celebrating the heritage, scale and impact of what is now the UK’s longest running community gardening campaign.

Pictures of Bloom/community gardeners in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

We will be running a 50th Bloom photo competition to gather photos early next year but it would be good to have as many as possible upfront for use in the media.  We'd encourage you to also add these to the photo competition for a chance to win one of the great prizes from the RHS. 

Characters/community champions who have been there from the beginning and driven whole campaigns/new Bloom stars – emerging characters in the Bloom community – just a few bullet-points and a pic would be ideal

Local celebs that support your campaigns and might be happy to talk to the media about what a difference your group makes                 

Any success stories / interesting quirky stories (with pix)

ITV ‘Love Your Garden’

ITV have commissioned a major one hour special version of the hit gardening TV series “Love Your Garden” starring Alan Titchmarsh. In this special, Alan and his team will build a state of the art wildlife garden to help a deserving cause such as a school , charity or organisation. The idea is that a beautiful and idyllic outdoor space that is a home for surrounding wildlife will be of huge therapeutic benefit to those who use it.  We are currently  looking for a suitable location  and an organisation that would be keen to work with us on bringing this garden to life. Naturally it goes without saying that the work of the organisation involved would be heavily featured in the programme. We are looking to build in 2014 and the programme would transmit in 2015.

 

BBC Gardeners World

BBC Gardeners World are looking for amazing front gardens all over the country as a source of inspiration for their viewers. They’re also looking for a street or cul de sac that is in the early stages of being transformed into something remarkable (have attached an article that appeared in Take a Break about The Terraces in Nottingham to give you an idea). The BBC want to follow the progress of another street next year.

In Bloom Ambassadors

We are delighted to introduce our first two Bloom Ambassadors, Richard Budge from Truro and Monica Whyte from Bristol.  This new initiative sets out to support nominated Bloom and It’s Your Neighbourhood volunteers to act as UK ambassadors for the campaign in their area.

The Bloom Ambassador’s role is to be available Nationally, regionally and locally to assist with publicity opportunities which may arise (i.e. media interviews etc).

Meet Monica

I have been involved in the Bristol in Bloom campaign since 2001, it was hard to get up to a gold standard, which we first achieved in 2005 and it is still a challenge to ensure that we remain at the top of our game. It is this experience that I hope to bring to the ‘In Bloom Ambassador Programme’ and I am delighted to have been nominated as one of the ambassadors for the South West region; but in a way we are all ambassadors in our own right through the work that we do for our ‘in Bloom’ groups.