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Garden Judging

A garden competition is a very simple way to engage with your local community and motivate community activity, however do beware! Conjuring up any sort of competition can be fraught with difficulties.

When designing your competition you must be sure to make it as fair as possible so that you can judge like with like. To this end you may need to judge a number of different categories i.e. backyards, front garden, back garden, big garden and small garden.

If you haven’t organised a garden competition before or you wish to keep the event quite modest then judging front gardens might be your best bet. It’s usually possible to judge a front garden without the need to gain access to the property. Judging back gardens will often require the householder to be at home so that judges can gain access and this can of course make organising the judging a good deal more complicated. If however you do make the effort you will find that residents love the opportunity to show you their garden so why not ask them if it’s ok to take a few pictures. The pictures make an excellent display at prize giving events and allow everybody else to see something of the competition.

Open Gardens

In recent years some communities have found it increasingly difficult to get individuals to participate in community events such as the organisation of the village show or participation in the local horticultural produce show. The advent of the open garden event has proven to be a subtle solution to this problem for a good number of communities.

Individuals who would otherwise not have the time or inclination to take part in a community event will suddenly be more than happy to take part in an event that will give them an opportunity to show the fruits of their labours to friends, neighbours and other interested parties.

Harnessing this slightly more self interested motivation for a community event inevitably results in a positive outcome, particularly as individual participants find themselves involved in the organisation of the event; putting on refreshments, fundraising and other positive interaction with the local community. Of course it would be unfair to suggest that all participants are motivated out of self interest but to have an awareness of its potential might be of use in certain situations.

A final word of caution, in urban communities there is a little more resistance to the concept of open gardens due to the fact that theft from gardens is more common and some of the gardens' visitors might use the opportunity to identify objects they may wish to remove at a later date!