Overall Impression
Heart of England in Bloom Judging 2024
Shrewsbury won the Horticultural Excellence Award, Small City category and was the overall winner in the Heart of England in Bloom competition 2024. This was awarded to ‘exceptional achievers who have demonstrated a consistently high standard in all areas of the judging criteria.’
The judges visited the town on 23 July with a four-hour tour starting at Shrewsbury Town Council’s Weeping Cross centre visiting a number of locations before moving on to the town centre and the award-winning Dingle gardens.
The town was judged against exacting criteria for not only its spectacular floral features, but also on the work that the community engages in on a local level and the conservation and recycling schemes in place to help protect our environment.
The Quarry
The Quarry lies in the heart of Shrewsbury and is the main recreational park in the town. Located in the loop of the river, it was laid out with tree-lined walks in 1719 and encompasses 29 acres. It is open to the general public 24 hours a day throughout the year including most public holidays. The facility is maintained to the high standards required for such a high profile area. The Quarry is used for various events throughout the year, including Shrewsbury Food Festival & Shropshire Oktoberfest.
The Dingle
At the centre of The Quarry Park is the jewel of our crown The Dingle, which provides visitors with high-impact planting schemes with seasonal planting twice a year.
Whilst the main features are the formal planted flower beds with around 30,000 plants, there is a wealth of sustainable planting in the form of trees and shrubs within the garden.
The Dingle is an oval quarry garden surrounded by a beech hedge and an exterior walk created in the late 19th Century.
In the Middle Ages, this area of the Quarry had been the town’s ‘wet’ stone quarry but with the increase in use of the area as parkland, the Dingle was cleaned out and enlarged in 1880.
The Dingle has a mix of formal flower beds surrounding a cast-iron Coalbrookdale fountain, which was presented in 1889, and a ornamental pool surrounded by trees and shrubs.
Mardol Quay Gardens
Mardol Quay Gardens is a small pocket park beside the River Severn and is home to the iconic ‘Quantum Leap’ sculpture, created to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and unveiled in 2009.
The park has fine turfed areas with stone planters, which have both seasonal and sustainable planting.
The park also provides space for memorial benches and trees. In view of the close proximity to the river, there is also a security-coded throw line in case anyone should fall in.
Floral features around the town help to provide additional colour for both residents and visitors. The summer bedding is planted in a variety of containers, including 12 daleks with inbuilt reservoirs, 120 floral pole tops, 100 railing inserts, 100 basket inserts, 50 recycled self-watering plastic barrels, 18 large sustainable self-watering timber-clad planters, 6 large tiered planters, 6 small tiered planters as well as 450 hanging baskets for both commercial and council buildings.
The Castle Grounds is an oasis of calm in the town centre with a mix of trees, shrubbery, seasonal planting and the carpet bed offers colour and interest all year round. Although owned by Shropshire Council, the Town Council have continued to maintain this facility and fund all of its ongoing maintenance. Grounds staff in the Castle determine the planting arrangements for each year with the nursery manager and, in the case of the carpet bed, create the design and determine the number of plants needed.