The Wildlife Trust
For Lancashire, Manchester
and North Merseyside

Bloomin’ Marvellous News For The Trust

The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside are celebrating after two of their projects were successful in the North West In Bloom 2010 awards.

The Trust’s Productive Landscapes In Preston (PLiP) team were heavily involved in a number of small sites that were acclaimed in the It’s Your Neighbourhood section of the awards, with Preston winning an impressive 62 awards across all categories.

Four of the small sites that the PLiP team worked on with local residents were awarded "Outstanding, Level 5", while one of these, the Ashdale Woodland Garden in Ingol, won the North West in Bloom Trophy for Best Neighbourhood.

PLiP also worked on eight school grounds projects that received Merit Awards. Of these, Holme Slack School in Deepdale was one of a small handful of schools regionally to achieve a North West in Bloom Environmental Award.

The Trust’s Wigan Flashes team entered the Meadow Creation and Management category in partnership with Wigan Flashes Conservation And Community Group and won an ‘Outstanding Level 5’ community project award as well as an award for best biodiversity project on the Flashes.

The work that won the award was done to improve the gateways adjacent to the Hawkley Hall Estate and involved planting of a mixture of annual cornflower species, including poppy and cornflower, corn marigold and corncockle with a long-term hay meadow seed mix planted at the same time, to provide perennial colour and to aid future biodiversity.

The end result will be a brighter and more inviting gateway, but the residents of Wigan aren’t the only ones who will benefit from this scheme, because it will also provide a great habitat for bees and other insects. The work was funded by Community Spaces and Big Lottery Fund and Wigan Flashes is part of the Greenheart Regional Park which covers an area of approx. 57 square kilometres at the heart of the borough and provides a diverse range of facilities and wildlife habitats within a thriving countryside setting.

Wigan Flashes Project Manager Mark Champion said: “We’re thrilled and very proud to receive recognition from North West In Bloom for this work and would like to thank everyone who was involved in supporting us or helping out.”

This year’s North West In Bloom Awards saw plenty of other success in the Wigan area, with Wigan Borough Council and other local groups winning a total of 11 awards, including a Gold award for a large metropolitan borough category.