COLUMN - Melton In Bloom with Marie Walters
The Waterways Bed in the Heritage Garden has now been transformed – in honour of our lovely new canal boat.
Using permanent planting, as planned, the remaining small wild area is still to be ‘tweaked’, but it’s important to keep it as part of the new design, so we are able to maintain a good level of insect life.
A lot of the new plants are also insect-friendly, and will provide shelter during the winter months, as they won’t be disturbed.
Within the boat itself, we have planted a small amount of violas, some ivies, dwarf conifers and bulbs, to add more instant winter colour.
We incorporated lots of manure, as the soil was very parched and lacking in nutrients and, once we’ve had more rain, we will mulch generously to keep the moisture retained for next spring/summer.
Our sincerest thanks go, once again, to lovely volunteers from the Melton Building Society, who worked so hard to enable us to make the transformation, alongside our own regular volunteers.
Continuing in the Heritage Garden, we have added many more bedding plants in all areas, including the Melton Fairtrade Bed, which we took over this autumn.
We recently presented the winners of our Hidden and Open Gems Competition with their very well deserved awards.
The Hidden winners were Melton Vets, with the Open category going to Richard Barnes Funeral Services, based on Wilton Road – both parties took up our 2026 theme of The Commonwealth, with the undertakers firm using lots of blue and yellow in their displays.
Melton Vets went a step further and had planters featuring different flags from Commonwealth countries, chosen because of where they had either worked as vets or have had vets from those countries working in their practice.
They included many different nations, including Jamaica, Guyana, Singapore, Seychelles, St Lucia, South Africa, India, the United Kingdom and one with the actual Commonwealth flag colours.
Other businesses that took part in our competition also provided some very eye-catching displays this year, and we would like many more businesses to enter our competition which it is held next year.