It’s not an easy thing to do, to convince your community to put on its best suit of clothing and add just a little bling to make itself look better than ordinary.
That’s what Communities in Bloom committees do. Cache Creek, Clinton and Ashcroft all have CiB committees, and the volunteers on those committees all work hard to encourage everyone to do their part.
It doesn’t work if it’s just one small group of people doing all the planting, cleaning and organizing. And it isn’t easy trying to convince the rest of the town that it’s in their own best interest to look good.
It’s not for the sake of winning a competition. It’s because it feels good to look good; tourists want to stay and look around some more; it encourages a sense of community when everyone is working together; it leads to better things and higher standards.
Cache Creek and Clinton have received their provincial awards this year, and Ashcroft will find out how well they did in the national competition in October. Regardless of how many blooms each community receives, we should all congratulate these local volunteers for spending countless hours dusting off our towns and bringing people closer together.
Join a garden tour and you will find out how easy it is to bring strangers together and get them talking about flowers, landscapes, ponds and every other aspect of gardening.
Like every other subject, there are people who enjoy the past time, and there are people who are absolutely passionate about it. I had the privilege of attending a national conference some years ago when I lived in Taylor, and that town was entered in the national conference. To listen to those people talk about their cities and what other cities were doing was just like a shot of adrenaline. It’s addicting!
And the best part of this addiction is that in order to get more, you have to do more. More planting, more community involvement, more sprucing up.
CiB also has an International competition; I wonder where we would place in a Planetary competition.
Wendy Coomber is editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal