Shrewsbury Town Council shows off blooming great work
Green-fingered enthusiasts attended an open evening at Shrewsbury’s Weeping Cross nursery this week.
Every year Shrewsbury Town Council grows upwards of 300,000 plants for colourful displays in the award-winning Dingle gardens, the Castle grounds, traffic islands and the many flower beds, planters and hanging baskets that have earned Shrewsbury’s enviable reputation as a ‘town of flowers.’
The Greenhouse, currently packed to the rafters with blooms ready for summer planting, was opened up to the public on Tuesday evening.
More than 50 guests explored the 4,000m² site – the equivalent size of a football pitch.
Visitors were awed by the sight of hundreds of commercial baskets ready to go out to the town’s businesses, tens of thousands of geraniums which will feature in the principal areas, as well as thousands of bedding plants and hundreds of standard fuscias destined for the Dingle.
Helen Ball, Town Clerk said: “We like to open up the Greenhouse for people who are interested in gardening to come and take a look around the site so they can appreciate the extent of our work. At this time of year, when the nursery is packed with plants for the summer bedding, it really is a sight to behold and the smell is simply breath-taking.”
Spring bedding has now been stripped from town centre sites ready for summer planting which starts this week.
Shrewsbury achieved a Gold Award and Category Winner title in the Heart of England in Bloom Awards in 2012 and was nominated to represent the West Midlands in the national Britain in Bloom Finals for 2013.
Judges will visit the town late summer to mark the town’s floral displays against exacting criteria.
