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Help wanted: Wednesday evenings at 5.00pm, and Sunday mornings at 9.00 am, watering the summer planting in the high street. All welcome.
2025 entry
We have officially entered Anglia in Bloom for 2025
The preparation will now continue in readiness for our judging day, which will be on a date in July.
Excited and anxious at the same time
We will be sharing more details in the coming weeks, and this year we have far more planned.
Can we go one better and win gold?
Beauchamps High School.
Before the half term we were invited along to see the garden area at Beauchamps High School. We are so pleased that they will be part of our Anglia in Bloom entry this year, we have a packed schedule on the judging day that's for sure.
I hope you will agree the garden area at the school is fantastic, considering its a relatively new area of the school. Bird boxes and tables made by the children, planters made from the former gym flooring, low maintenance garden and vegetable plots with a greenhouse as well.
Riverside Walk.
We are entering far more categories this year for our judging of AiB, one area will be Riverside walk which is currently looking beautiful.
Wildflowers, loads of bees and dragonflies and plenty of fish to be seen in the river
Have a walk when you get a chance, you can also head off towards Downham via some of the public footpaths.
Abacus Primary School.
We were really happy to be invited to Abacus Primary School to discuss the school being part of our Anglia in Bloom entry for 2025.
We did extremely well last year but we wanted to try and engage with local schools and they have a lovely gardening group which would be perfect for being part of the entry. It was great to hear that they have already achieved their RHS Level 1 and are now working towards their Level 2.
They have plans for planting this year and also the creation of a small garden area with a memorial bench. Some images of this years plants, the A sign to be planted and the before image of the memorial area are shown.
We look forward to working with the school in the coming weeks and hope they will enjoy being a part of Wickford's entry.
2024 entry
In 2023 we decided that we would enter Anglia in Bloom for 2024. As added pressure we would be the first town in the borough of Basildon to do this. For this we would be judged on several aspects of our work, not just the planting. A lot of planning was needed and this took up a fair part of 2023 and our committee meetings. We needed to show the following :
Public and community engagement. We encourage all members of the community to join our work parties and we have several members who are involved in other community volunteer groups. We often have members of the public asking about our work who then go on to donate plants (and ice creams in the hot weather! ) to our hardworking volunteers. As part of the presentation Eve Belle Care home wanted to be involved as they have a sensory garden for their residents, and the Swan Public house installed fantastic hanging baskets.
Projects. We had been thinking about offering to do work in the Wickford Cemetery as it was very unkempt. See the separate page regarding this. This proved to be a perfect fit for our project requirement so throughout 2024 the team, under Robbie, worked hard to bring the cemetery gardens up to the high standard it is today.
Benefits to the community. The obvious benefit is the gloriously colourful display of the summer planting. Also we believe it brings the community closer together in their pride in the town and hopefully brings more people into the town to support the shops and market traders
Environmental considerations. We have installed several trees as part of our planting regime to the obvious benefit of the environment and air quality. The flowering blooms are a boon for bees and insect life in general. Our rainwater harvesting, whilst on a small scale at present, saves water and is better for the plants. We try where possible to use peat free planting media, and we compost the deadheads and as much of the old planting as possible. The Memorial park was also included in this category and won an award in its own right for Biodiversity
Our inspection took place on 16th July 2024 and we took the two judges from Anglia in Bloom to the Memorial park, the High Street, Eve Belle and the Wickford Cemetery. It was a nice sunny day and the judges were most impressed with our work.
We had to wait until 6th September 2024 for the awards, and to be honest it exceeded our expectations. We won Silver Guilt for best large town, Best New Entry, Best Commercial Area, and the park won for best Conservation/Biodiversity project
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