‘Bloomers’ hope judges go wild for dino-garden
APRE-HISTORIC dinosaur garden is set to play a starring role in Rochdale’s North West in Bloom entry this year, as the borough gears up to welcome Dippy the dinosaur in 2020.
The really wild garden is already having a stonking great impact, with specially selected plants and a giant tyrannosaurus rex head, designed by young
people from Training.
The special garden features a variety of plants including ferns, which have been around for 350 million years and predate the dinosaurs, alongside Monkey puzzle tress, with their distinctive spiky appearance, which date back more than 200 million years.
Some of the plants included would even have made up part of Dippy’s diet such as conifers and a type of pine tree which have been Rochdale around 150 million years. The new garden is taking pride of place on Gracie Island in Town Hall Square, and stands in the spot where the First World War pop-up garden was erected last year to mark the centenary of the conflict.
The hugely popular garden, which was awarded best feature in a public place by the Royal Horticultural Society, has since been moved to the Memorial Gardens.
The Dippy garden is a three triangle design so people can wander around the installation and enjoy browsing the plants.
The feature will be part of Rochdale’s entry into North West in Bloom and follows the borough’s runaway success in last year’s competition, which saw Rochdale scoop a gold award in the regional heats as well as a gold in its first ever entry into the national Britain in Bloom competition.
A prestigious judging panel has already visited the garden, alongside a dozen other community and council sites across the borough.
Councillor Neil Emmott, cabinet member for environment at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “We put on a magnificent show for the In Bloom competition last year and we’re pulling out all the stops again this year.
“With Dippy’s visit to Rochdale just months away, we wanted our In Bloom entry to give a nod to this momentous occasion.
“Dippy’s visit aims to get people excited about the natural world and inspire millions of natural history adventures, so I can’t imagine a more fitting way to build the excitement than with a really wonderful pre historic garden, with its very own T Rex!”
Winners will be announced at the North West in Bloom awards ceremony in Southport in October where the team hope to be chosen again to represent the North West in the national Britain in Bloom competition in 2020. The Natural History Museum’s famous dinosaur, Dippy, is currently on a UK wide tour and will visit the council’s customer service centre, office and central library, Number One Riverside next year.
Rochdale will be Dippy’s only stop in the North West and will be in the borough from February 10 to June 28.