Thank you for your support.
There is a bit more to this.
Three weeks ago the Ferndown in bloom committee had a meeting, to which the public were invited.
Lyn attended, she was the only member of the public there.
The committee asked Lyn if she would like to join the committee.
Well we had heard some time ago that they had been thinking of not allowing a previous winner to enter this year. So the alarm bells started to ring with Lyn, and myself when she told me. That if she joined the committee she probably wouldn't be able to enter the competition anyway.
She was told it wouldn't stop her from entering, she declined anyway. But was invited to the next meeting as a sort of advisor.
Lyn attended the next meeting and put forward several suggestions, including that the prize money should be advertised, which it wasn't last year. Wouldn't you think that if people knew the first prize was £100 in tokens to spend at the garden centre that sponsors the competition, more people would enter ?. (Second and third prizes were allocated also.)
Lyn came away from the meeting with some assurance that this year she would be able to enter, This was obviously turned round in the week or so since that meeting.
The "old" Ferndown in bloom run by a different committee, tried to do a similar thing with us after we had won twice. One Saturday morning while shopping in Ferndown, we met one of the committee, who greeted us with the words "I have good news for you, this year, any garden that opens their garden to the public will have to go into a separate category in the competition"
Why gardens that open should be singled out, not to be in the main competition is very unfair, we all work hard to achieve a nice garden for the public to visit. The fact that there would only then be three gardens in this new category, seemed stupid, so we pulled out from the competition.
Approximately three years later the competition folded, due to lack of entrants. About another three years later on the "New" Ferndown in bloom
Malcolm
