The Colchester Garden Festival launched on Thursday 21st July and will run until Monday 22nd August. The event is organised by Our Colchester Business Improvement District (BID) and celebrates the environment, green spaces, and gardening. There is a mixture of show stopping installations including pop-up pallet gardens, upcycled planters, and shop front murals. Free and paid events, including workshops, public installations, podcast recordings and shows are also going on in town.
Businesses in the city centre were invited to decorate their store fronts with plants and upcycled materials to create window displays to brighten the city. Perrywood Garden Centre donated the plants and peat-free soil for floral displays. Perrywood Communications and HR Director Hannah visited all the businesses who took part on Tuesday 26th July to judge the winning display.
Hannah comments, "The competition has certainly brightened up Colchester, and the shop owners and managers we spoke to really enjoyed taking part. They’d had some lovely feedback from customers and I’m sure it will inspire some of them to get more plants in their lives. Congratulations to all the businesses who took part, we applaud your creativity and effort."
The chosen winning display was created by Victoria Yum Bakery with sugar and icing sugar bags upcycled into flower planters. It was very creative and linked in really well to the baking business. There was a great use of props and the icing sugar dusted on the petals was a lovely extra.
Runners up were charity shop Emmaus, with a beautiful window display featuring a planted-up tower of washing machine drums and streetwear store Attitude with a repurposed display shoe and planted up backpack!
Manager of the Our Colchester Business Improvement District (BID) Sam Good says, “It has been a pleasure to work with Perrywood Garden Centre on multiple projects across the Colchester Garden Festival.
The businesses who have taken part in the upcycling competition have created wonderful displays celebrating the garden festival and these displays wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of Perrywood.
Families from the 13 local schools involved in the school gardens have also been fortunate to have Perrywood Garden Centre supporting their gardens from the donation of vouchers at the beginning of their project and plants to help keep the gardens looking their best.
There are lots of great free family activities happening across Colchester city centre for the Colchester Garden Festival to help keep the kids entertained in the school holidays.”
The public can also vote for their favourite and view each of the displays by visiting https://incolchester.co.uk/awards/business-display, voting finishes on Monday 22nd August.
