School children around Bridport have been busy growing pumpkins to enter into the first ever greatest pumpkin awards held at Groves Nurseries.
Back in April Groves Nurseries provided local schools with pumpkin seeds, pots, compost and some growing guides and asked to grow the best pumpkins that they could. Unfortunately the summer turned out to be one of the wettest on record sonot a great year for growing pumpkins but that didn’t deter the entrants that took part. Some of the pumpkins were grown in school gardens but a lot were taken back to the children’s homes and grown there.
The competition was divided into six categories – widest circumference, heaviest pumpkin, best carved pumpkin, best dressed pumpkin, the perfect pair of pumpkins and the tastiest edible produce.
The pumpkins were judged by Groves Nurseries' very own accredited show judge Cyril Whitlock and each category was awarded a first second and a highly commended.
The pupils then won gardening vouchers for their school, £10 for every first prize, £5 for every second prize and £3 for every highly commended.
Burton Bradstock took away the most in vouchers with a grand total of £51 to spend on their school garden. This was closely followed by Salway Ash in second, Powerstock in third and St Catharine’s in fourth.
Garden Centre Manager Charlie Groves said: “It was unfortunate that the weather wasn’t kind to us in the first year that we decided to run this competition. That said it was great to see so many entries from all of the schools. Hopefully the children enjoyed growing pumpkins from seeds and creating something interesting from them.”
All of the pumpkins were on display at Groves garden centre from Halloween up until Sunday the 4th of November.
Groves Garden Centre were silver winners in this year's Greatest Garden Centre Awards.
