WIGHT IN BLOOM WINNERS CELEBRATED AT AWARDS CEREMONY

Over 100 guests gathered at the Quay Arts Centre on Friday for this year’s Wight in Bloom awards, celebrating Island horticultural excellence.

Wight In Bloom’s Patron, celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh MBE VMH DL, presided over the ceremony, which took place in the Anthony Minghella Theatre.

Supported and managed for the past 4 years by Visit Isle of Wight (VIOW) together with event sponsor Red Funnel Ferries, Wight in Bloom is open to all Island residents and organisations with the aim to make the Island a brighter, greener place to live and visit.

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114 gardens were all visited by a panel of volunteer judges during July, scoring the entries for their design, range of plants, colour, presentation, maintenance and creativity. This year a new judging element was introduced ‘How Green Is Your Garden’ – gardens were awarded bonus points for recycling, wildlife friendly habitats and water saving ideas. Given the dry conditions that gardeners had to cope with this summer, water saving was a top priority.

There were some outstanding individual, professional and community entrants, one worthy of mention being Community Kids who had to cope with their gardens being vandalised at Sandown Railway Station, however they persevered and came away as winners of their category. 11-year-old Lucas Richards sold his play house to buy the materials to create his own garden, raised his own plants from seeds, so he well deserved his Highly Commended Award in his category.

The toughest task was deciding the overall winner, who received the Peggy Garman Trophy (Founder of Wight In Bloom). A group of judges visited the best gardens in each category to choose the winner. Sue Cheek was the eventual overall winner for her allotment at Quarry Road in Ryde.

Sue said:

“I’m absolutely gobsmacked, I really can’t believe it. It was really hard work, but at the end of the day, it was worth it.”

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Sue puts her win down to being green:

“I think I used a lot of recycled things, in fact everything on the allotment is recycled and when you looked at it, you couldn’t see everything, you had to walk around the allotment to see everything.”

Alan Titchmarsh MBE, VMH DL, said:

“I think the fact that we’ve had 114 people entering this competition, it grows year on year. It’s people that remember that the Isle of Wight’s always been called the Garden Isle and who take that to heart and decide that their gardens will help to bolster that reputation. It’s so important, we all know how good we feel, even if we’re not gardeners, going down a street or a road or a lane and seeing a beautiful garden It adds to the pleasures of life it adds to the quality of life and all of these people here, they’re at the top of the game, they’ve done the most to make this island blossom.

“It makes me feel as though my life has been vindicated, I was passionate about growing things from the age of about eight, decided there and then that I wanted to be a gardener for a living and I have done for an awfully long time now, so to see youngsters coming on is just the best thing in the world and you don’t want to force them too much, it’s gentling them along, make sure they enjoy it. Mainly, to start with, just enjoy being outside, they don’t need to know Latin names and all that kind of complicated thing.”

Winners of Wight in Bloom 2018

Each finalist was awarded a Red Funnel Travel Voucher and a Liz Earle Gift Bag