Carrick-on-Shannon Tidy Towns news

The Tidy Towns competition is judged from June until August and the results will be announced in September. We hope to retain our gold medal status and the title of the Tidiest Town in Leitrim. This will not be easy of course as other towns and villages are always improving.

There are 8 categories that comprise the competition in 2021, these include: Community - Your Planning and Involvement, Streetscape and Public Places, Nature and Biodiversity in your Locality, Sustainability - Doing more with less, Tidiness and Litter Control, Residential Streets and Housing Areas, Approach Roads, Streets and Lanes. So as you can see litter picking, although important, is not the only thing we do.

There is always so much more we could do with more volunteers so we will be listing the benefits of volunteering in the following weeks. Starting with: Meeting new people and expanding your community. If ever there was a time for meeting new people it is now!

I personally am glad I have met friends in Tidy Towns, especially when planning new projects, meeting up on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings with the coffee /tea /chat afterwards outside in the fresh air, and all the other times we go out and about doing a bit. Meeting people with a common goal is a good way to get things done!

Sunday mornings weather in August has been a mixed bag but we continue with our 1 hour litter picks, a big thank you to Gala for the sponsorship. We meet at the Tourist Office at 10am.

Tuesday evenings we continue maintenance with mulching, weeding, cleaning, washing, etc. We meet at the Tourist Office at 7.30 pm. Follow us on Facebook for updates.

Volunteers continue to wash, paint, water flower planters and containers and a myriad of other seemingly small but vital jobs during the week. Now is the time for cutting wild flower meadows and removing all the material, we will be composting it. By removing it, the soil is not being enriched and this discourages grass growth and will hopefully let more wild flowers germinate.

It is also time to think about what spring bulbs to plant. Try to plant bulbs that will benefit pollinators when they come out early in the spring, e.g. snowdrops, bluebells, crocus, grape hyacinth.

If you are on Instagram please give tidytowns_carrickonshannon a follow, at the moment we are documenting and highlighting all the art work around Carrick-on-Shannon, a project that will keep us busy for a while.