Yorkshire in Bloom judging day 1st July

We’ve been tidying up all around Otley, our members have been litter-picking in Ilkley Road, Westgate, over the bridge to Billams Hill, around the Maypole and Manchester square, in fact all over town. We’ve tidied up the gateways at Leeds Road, Pool Road, we’ve refurbished the displays in the Memorial Gardens, on Kirkgate, and the bed by the Chippendale Statue, and we’ve got a great window display in Skipton Building Society (just to the right of the new cycling sculpture there).

Yellow bikes everywhere

We’ve installed yellow bikes with yellow boxes of yellow flowers all over Otley to welcome and celebrate the Tour de France Grand Depart on 5th July. You’ll have seen the finished results so we thought you’d like to see some photos of us setting them up. On 25th May we put them on the roundabouts, before the Summer bedding was planted by the Parks Dept.

And the finished result:

And here’s the one outside HSBC being set up by Ian and Ernie, before Jacquie and Charlotte fixed on the flower basket.

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.