More than 100 gardens and green spaces have been named as winners of the annual borough-wide competition

Graham and Maria Roberts won a gold award in the ‘front garden also used for parking’ category

The winners of this year’s Enfield In Bloom competition have been named ahead of an awards ceremony due to take place later this month.

The annual competition sees judges visiting entries across 14 different award categories in June and July before dishing out gold, silver and bronze prizes at October’s ceremony. This year, there a total of 112 winners.

Enfield In Bloom aims to encourage residents to care for their garden areas and celebrate and recognise people’s achievements. It is run entirely by volunteers.

Dennis Lushey, the competition’s chair, told the Dispatch: “We want to encourage people to brighten up their space and brighten up the borough.”

St Peter’s Church, gold winner of the ‘display in a public area’ category

Each award category is sponsored by a local business, and all the winners receive small cash prizes. There are also school categories and the winners of these receive an engraved trophy to keep for a year. There is also a trophy for the overall best front garden which will not be revealed until the ceremony itself.

One of the gold winners in the category for ‘best wildlife space’ is New Southgate Millennium Green, which is run by volunteers. Warden Andrew Irvine said: “Maybe now, people might understand why we wanted our hedges to be 2.4m high – our research shows that a number of birds nest in it at around two metres!

“The judges probably don’t even know that we have eleven bird boxes, with different hole sizes, at different heights on different types of trees. We also have a pair of bat boxes we rebuilt last year […] we have regular sightings of foxes, frogs and hedgehogs.”

A complete list of winners can be found via the Enfield In Bloom website:
Visit enfieldinbloom.org.uk

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.