Kentville takes top honours at Communities in Bloom Awards

BY KIRK STARRATT

The Advertiser

NovaNewsNow.com

Mayor Dave Corkum says it’s another number one score for the Town of Kentville. The town took home top honours at the recent Communities in Bloom Awards in Halifax. Kentville earned the highest number of blooms awarded - five - in the 5,001 to 10,000 population category. This is the second time Kentville has received five blooms at the provincial level since 1999.

The town’s Ducks Unlimited Miner Marsh Project received special mention at the ceremony and the award highlighted the town’s diligent work on projects such as the recent anti-idling campaign and Kentville’s partnership with the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Kingstec Campus.

“Receiving five blooms is quite an honour,” Corkum said. “It’s great to be recognized on a provincial level through the Communities in Bloom program and I’m proud of our town’s contributions to the environment, beautification and our overall efforts to make Kentville a desired place to live.”

Corkum said it’s great to see community members working together to achieve benefits and lots of thanks goes to Parks and Recreation director Mark Phillips and Community Development coordinator Erin Mason for their great efforts.

“We’re proud that business community involvement seems to be growing and mushrooming,” Corkum said, pointing out that the town is very fortunate to be one of the few areas in the province experiencing population growth. “We’re getting growth in people and participation.”

Community partnerships

Phillips said one encouraging aspect, considering the town’s participation in the past, is there are several areas of evaluation in which they’ve improved. The initiative keys on community partnerships including the partnership with Kingstec, for example, where the planters for Communities in Bloom were done.

He said, through the beautification program, participating businesses each received a flower basket in addition to the baskets put out by the town.

Mason said there would hopefully be more involvement on the part of the NSCC in the future and they had about 40 businesses participate in the program. She said they weren’t sure how it would go, but the businesses, which are always looking for new opportunities, saw the benefit and took ownership.

She said they hope to continue with the beautification campaign for Christmas, as they’ve had even more participation and it really seems to be catching on. Participating businesses get energy efficient LED lights and wreathes.

Communities in Bloom is a volunteer-based, not-for-profit organization committed to fostering civic pride, environmental awareness and municipal beautification. Registered communities compete in their population categories and are judged on evaluation criteria including tidiness, environmental awareness, community involvement, heritage conservation, urban forest management, landscape areas, floral displays and turf and groundcovers.