Town won’t enter bloom competition until 2025

HENLEY will not enter the Britain in Bloom competition again until 2025.

Organisers feel this will give them a better chance of winning gold.

Catherine Notaras, who chairs Henley in Bloom, says the committee needs time to properly prepare for the annual contest, having not taken part since 2019.

Up until then the town had won seven golds in the Thames and Chilterns regional competition in eight years.

Town clerk Sheridan Jacklin-Edward suggested at a Henley in Bloom sub-committee meeting on Thursday last week entering again next year if a plan was in place. But Ms Notaras, who became the first non-councillor to take on the role in May, said that would be too soon.

“I stick by my guns,” she said. “2024 is about getting it together, getting your ducks in a line, getting the infrastructure in. There needs to be new planters and things. I would prefer to have less stress and more success and enter in 2025.

“It’s going to make a hell of a lot of difference if we use 2024 to properly prepare and it’ll make the job for the following year a whole lot easier instead of rushing into it. Let’s get it right and get the structure right.”

Karl Bishop, the council’s parks manager, said that while entering next year might be a worthwhile “suck it and see” exercise, he wanted to be in the competition to win it.

He said: “We don’t want to go into it thinking that we’re going to get silver. We want to get gold and we want to be ready for that goal.

“Have we got what we need in place in terms of the right criteria? Definitely not at the moment. Do we have enough time to get volunteer groups in place? I don’t think we’re ready to enter next year. I would prefer to be more in a position to feel more comfortable than we are.”

Kyle Dowling, the parks services supervisor, said: “I wouldn’t want to enter anything that we’re not going to win. That’s just my mentality. I want us to be the best.”

The sub-committee also discussed the strategy for the judges’ tour and agreed that first impressions were important. It was suggested that the start of the tour should be at Henley Bowls Club to highlight the community involvement and the end should be impressive, perhaps with a boat tour starting and finishing at the River & Rowing Museum jetty.

More than 30 items and locations were highlighted as possible stops on the tour or inclusions in the accompanying portfolio, including the new adventure golf course and the planned new adventure playground in Mill Meadows, Holy Trinity Churchyard and the Nature2 rewilding campaign, which was launched by Greener Henley with the Henley Standard earlier this year.

The sub-committee also agreed to relaunch the Henley front garden competition next year and perhaps have categories for formal and wild gardens, with judging scheduled to suit each one.