Geraldton’s best gardeners gathered in September at Ryan’s Garden and Aquarium Centre for the City of Geraldton’s annual gardening competition. The competition is an initiative of Geraldton’s Tidy Towns Committee, which revamped this year’s competition by expanding the number of categories, and renamed the event City Wide Pride.
Two teams of judges toured the City to evaluate entrants, despite experiencing storms the night before judging.
“Despite the strong winds and rain, damage to gardens was minimal,” said Councillor Sue Lennard. “I applauded the green thumbs behind the entries for making Geraldton a more attractive place to live and work.”
The winner of the Best Kept Garden category was Jeanette Cant, who scored highly for her clever use of plants of varying heights to give a layered effect, enhancing her home. The Best Kept Street was taken out by Abalone Place, which earned a high score for being ‘consistently immaculate’. It was rewarded with a ‘Best Kept Street’ sign above the street sign for a year, and use of a Collex skip bin for garden waste for a week.
Central West College of TAFE snatched the Best Public Place award, with judges remarking on its ‘fantastic continuity of theme and planting of appropriate species throughout the entire college, while coping with the problems posed by recent building renovations’. The Best Commercial Property was taken out by BP Tarcoola Service Station.
Each major winner received gardening goods. A series of one off prizes, including vouchers, went to gardens deemed to be deserving in some way.
