Is your garden an award winner?
[attach]4404[/attach]This year North York residents have a chance to try their hands — or spades — at growing award-winning gardens.
Nominations for the first North York Great Front Gardens Awards will be accepted until July 6.
The contest is co-sponsored by the North York Garden Club and Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation.
“We’re encouraging people to take pride in their property and beautify it,” says club president Gail Bebee.
Gardens must be within the area south of Steeles Avenue, west of Don Mills Road, north of Highway 401 and east of Bathurst Street.
North York gardeners join the ranks of east and west-enders who have already been competing in similar contests for the past 20 years, like Scarborough’s Trillium Awards and Etobicoke’s Great Garden Awards.
The winners of each local contest will be entered into the citywide gardening competition, the City of Toronto Garden Contest, next year.
Bebee hopes the North York community will respond enthusiastically to the contest and would like to see at least 50 gardens entered. The garden club itself has about 100 members.
“Ideally, it should be difficult to choose winners,” she says with a laugh.
Gardens can be entered in three categories — traditional residential front gardens with a lawn, environmental or alternative residential front gardens with little or no lawn, or front gardens of condos and apartments.
About a dozen members of the North York club will judge the gardens in late July based on their design, use of plant material, maintenance, landscaping and environmental practices.
Details of the awards are still being worked out, but they will be presented on Sept. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at Edithvale Community Centre at 131 Finch Ave. West.
Anyone can nominate a North York garden that impresses them, and residents of the area are free to put forward their own gardens.
Nomination forms are available at the garden club’s website ([url]www.northyorkgardenclub.ca[/url]) and can be emailed, mailed or dropped off at the Edithvale Community Centre.
