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Grassroots Giving benefits Otley in Bloom

Otley in Bloom are celebrating receiving a £500 grant from Skipton Building Society’s Grassroots Giving scheme.  Katie Burnett, secretary of Otley in Bloom explained; “We heard about the scheme when we used one of the Skipton Building Society’s windows for our Tour de France display.  We were shortlisted from thousands of applications, and that is when it got interesting.  The next stage to become a finalist involved a public vote via social media and email.  We weren’t sure that many of our supporters would use social media, but we were wrong, and we are really grateful to everyone who took the time to vote for us.”

Otley in Bloom have pledged to use the funds to add to the sustainable planting around the town.  They will be looking to add perennial plants which come back every year, but add more colour and flowers than shrubs.  The first batch of plants will be some red perennial poppies for the memorial garden.

Craven Street garden

It was a very successful taskforce at Craven Street a couple of weeks ago with a good turnout, especially thanks to the local residents who had responded to Katie and Mike’s note. There were around 15 of us altogether, and it was enjoyable working together and sharing ideas. Some of the local residents took a great interest in the proposed garden, not only did they work hard, but also advised about how to lay a lawn, and took lots of stuff to the tip. With their extra help we were able to dig over the site, clear out weeds and stones, plant some bulbs and scatter grass seed. It was good that it rained that afternoon! Hopefully the grass will germinate soon, if it hasn’t already.

Katie did a great job in providing notices, barriers and coffee and cake. 

We have a bench for the space, and perhaps we can all get together and finish off in the Spring with some wildflower seed along the fence.

Behind the scenes

We have an allotment at the Burras Lane site where we grow on plants we’ve saved from the planters, we compost waste and prunings, and do other “housekeeping” tasks. This year we grew marigolds from seed to use in the baskets of our yellow bikes. Now we’ve got a new water butt and guttering on our shed to make it easier to keep all our plants watered, thanks to Ernie for installing this.

And here’s Jacquie looking after some of the plants.

Otley in Bloom – new photos

One of the latest members to join the group this year Colin, is a photographer and so we couldn’t resist asking him to take some pictures which show of some of the areas we’ve been working on this year.  I’ve attached a few here and the rest can be seen in the Gallery section and will be used in the brochures next year.  Thanks again Colin and keep them coming, they are great.