It’s about creating a brighter, greener, and healthier community.
Communities in Bloom is a Canadian non-profit organization that hosts a competition that has municipalities going head-to-head in hopes of winning blooms.
“We submit our registration to have them come to our municipality and evaluate us on our green areas, our tidiness, our forestry, environmental sustainability, and heritage,” explained Jazelle Daly, Cold Lake Communities in Bloom committee secretary.
Based on their overall points, the community is given one to five blooms, and offered tips on how to improve their score.
“It’s really about improving the municipality pertaining to the horticulture and green areas,” noted Daly.
This year, the local group will be participating in the exclusive nation-wide competition.
According to Daly, it’s by invitation only. In order to qualify, a municipality must either be invited based on a previous year’s participation or be recommended through the provincial competition.
In the past, Daly said their participation has “been a little slow.”
In 2015, the community reached five blooms, the highest score obtainable through the program.
“We did really well because we have a Community Garden Society in Cold Lake that just blew the evaluation out of the water. That’s something that we’re really proud of,” Daly expressed.
She added, the committee was suffering for a little while, but is now back in full force.
“We have a lot of new members and we’re all really excited, especially now that we’re in nationals,” she continued.
Judges rate communities based on their criteria.
In terms of tidiness, the visiting judge is considering the overall effort made by the municipality, local businesses, institutions, and residents throughout the community. They consider parks, green spaces, medians, sidewalks, road shoulders, vacant lots, buildings, and weed control, among others.
The next category is environmental action. This is evaluated based on the impact human activities have on the environment and subsequent efforts and achievements of the community, specifically in respect to policies, bylaws, programs, and waste production practices.
Finally, judges look at heritage conservation, which is the attempts made to preserve natural and cultural heritage within the community.
Daly said participating in the program “betters our quality of life within the municipality.”
“We’re all really excited about it, so we might as well do our best to see how we can improve every year.”
It’s also a way of putting the municipality on the map and gets the whole community working towards the same goal, noted Daly.
Residents can get involved by keeping their property clean, picking up litter, and taking part in one of the events the local committee hosts.
“It’s a community involvement thing where we all come together and work on projects, it’s just a really great program.”
