Keeping Scotland Beautiful
Back at the beginning of the year the volunteers of Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous decided to enter the Keep Scotland Beautiful competition for towns and villages – Scotland in Bloom. Duns is classed as a small town so we were sent our criteria to cover the work, and we set to.
Our normal Monday morning work covered everything in the criteria under the three headings, Horticultural Achievement, Environmental Impact and Community Participation, however, we had to document it all in a year-round diary – eek! Luckily our resident photographer, Dominique snaps away constantly so we had plenty of pictures to work on. I did my normal rambling about work each month and Lesley did a great job of consolidating it all in to a wonderful easy to read ‘book’. Then came the lead up to the actual judging day 3rd August and the extra hard graft started. Pavements were weeded, brushed and polished. Litter was lifted. Outside private houses, window boxes and pots were tweaked and replanted by their owners and the whole town was buzzing. We also hit an extremely hot (for Scotland!) few weeks and the plants were seriously suffering so the ‘watering team’ were out on a daily basis keeping things alive. By the time Monday 3rd August arrived I think we were all extremely glad! It was such a wonderful day though. We had guests from Duns Community Council, Scottish Borders Council, Duns & District Men’s Shed and many others. Our website kdbm.org has a junior page and a few of the children who attend our Parish Messy Church had a great time completing some of the craft ideas using plants. Lucy came along with her mum and had a table to herself to show off her and her friends work, which was fabulous.
Our lovely judges, Liz and Penny, from Keep Scotland Beautiful, seemed to really enjoy the day and were impressed by our lovely town. We have to wait until end of September or early October to see what we have been awarded, if anything, but, whatever happens, we will keep gardening away keeping Duns looking Blooming Marvellous.
