Gardening Advice & Tips for Irish Gardeners

Well the wait is over and the results are in! Well done to Portarlington for another year of hard work and dedication to improve the look and quality of the town in which we live. The efforts of the community and the committee members  have certainly paid off as we have again raised the bar for another year, scoring 244 points overall in the Tidy towns Competition 2012. This is an increase of 14 points on the previous years and an overall rise of 40 points over the last 4 years!

Portarlington is listed in Category E, as it is a medium sized town with a population of between 5,001 to 10,000 people. It is certainly great to see that a town which has grown in size and suffered from the effects of poor planning and housing developments, still managed to improve it’s score year on year over the last 4 competitions. This can only be down to the sheer hard work of the many participants from around the town who have given their time and energy to get involved in something that can truly make a difference. What a simple thing it is to offer a few hours of your time to clear rubbish from your street or plant up a hanging basket outside your door or touch up an old fence with paint. It is certainly true that if everyone took care of their own plot of land we would certainly be living in a better place.

There are many great assets in and around the town of Portarlington. Corrig wood, the Bog, the lakes at Derryounce and the River Barrow that flows through the town are all wonderful natural amenities to have and they should be cherished and maintained for the good of the people. There are also many buildings of historical importance, including those on Patrick St., Main St. and French Church St. and it was great to see so many being given a new lease of life this summer. It just goes to show what a little community spirit can do.

The Tidy Towns Competition scores each town on a number of factors and they are: Overall development Approach, The Built Environment, Landscaping, Wildlife and Natural Amenities,

Litter Control, Waste Minimisation, Tidiness, Residential Areas, Roads, Streets and Back Areas and The General Impression. Improvements have been made in all areas bar 3 this year and most notably the area of litter control, which we scored 25 out of 50 (same as last year). This is always a regrettable situation as litter is something that everyone has an equal responsibility for and it is something that everyone can help with.

Let’s hope that 2013 can see us improve even further with big improvements needed in the area of litter. One thing for sure is that we can no longer be called a ‘Dirty old Town’, we have a lot done but there is still a lot more to do.