Easter is the start of Gardening Time
The In Bloom volunteers achieved a lot in 2017 – even more planting, a fun Hook In Bloom competition that anyone could enter and the culmination of the year – a very successful Hook Flower & Produce Show.
Now that Easter is fast approaching, the gardening industry’s time to be ready for the new season, we are using March Hook Focus to launch this year’s gardening competition. Tesco is very kindly sponsoring the Best Front Garden and Hanging Basket categories with £25 gardening vouchers as prizes and de Jager bulbs, who celebrate their 150th birthday this year, is sponsoring the most attractive business premises, best hotel, pub or restaurant, and best allotment with £25 bulb vouchers.
Start Planning
Now is the time to start planning your floral feats in the garden to enter either your hanging basket or front garden in Hook In Bloom. Some of the people who won last year didn’t enter because they didn’t believe they would stand a chance. Luckily others saw their achievements and nominated them for a category. What a surprise they had when they got their invites to the presentation!
The restaurants and pubs category is always a difficult category to judge and it would be good to see more village businesses entering. We are ever hopeful that the centre of Hook will be even more inviting, with more colour and more planting.
The Hook Flower and Produce Show
This has become a very popular event on Hook’s calendar and this year we are lucky enough to be able to host the show again thanks to Tesco’s Bags of Help initiative.
So whilst you are planning your garden or allotment planting, don’t forget your entries for the flower, vegetable, fruit, craft and produce show on Sunday 9th September. There will be a wide choice of categories, so get planning, planting, growing and crafting. For more details keep an eye on Hook Focus, visit http://www.hookinbloom.org.uk, watch out for the leaflets later in the year or email sue.hinton@hook.gov.uk.
Again people were over the moon last year when they won a category. We heard so many people taking off the Father Brown mystery series and referring to their award winning chutneys, leeks, cakes, crafts, floral displays and so on. Just like Mrs. McCarthy’s award winning scones.
What do we want to achieve this year?
More planting, more colour and more improvements in our village.
Bulbs in the troughs at the entrances to the village are starting to poke through amongst the pansies, let’s hope the deer can refrain from having a lovely dinner. We will continue to plant and maintain these.
We want to plant even more bulbs. If you can help please let us know. You will see more crocus and bulbs popping up around the War Memorial. We want to plant even more crocus in this area being careful not to disturb the Rotary’s Crocus Campaign for the eradication of Polio. We planted daffodils outside the church but as we had so many bulbs to plant we couldn’t manage to put more in the grass alongside the cemetery – that will be on our list this year. You will also see daffodils appearing in Crossways Carpark along the hedge.
The bed outside Hook Fish and Chip Shop will be overhauled and the bench is earmarked for another coat of preserver. We will give up on Thyme outside Londis and revert back to wildflowers as well as outside the Fish and Chip Shop. The schools would like planting at their entrances. We will continue to find locations to plant as many bulbs as possible.
We also want to erect another chainsaw sculpture. If you come to the 9th September show you will see Rob Beckinsaw who created our rose sculpture, making a new one.
If you know of anywhere in Hook that you feel needs some Hook In Bloom TLC do let us know and the committee will consider it. We say consider it because we have to take into account position and whether it is safe from vandalism.
Next month we hope to announce another super addition to the Hook In Bloom story – watch this space!
Hook in Bloom 