Floral butterfly centerpiece for Melksham’s Britain in Bloom

Residents of a western town have been busy cultivating their entry for this year’s South West in Bloom, ready for the judges to visit.

The displays in Melksham, Wiltshire, include two floral butterflies on the Market Roundabout, created by local horticulturist, Richard Collett.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) competition is celebrating its 60th anniversary and Melksham is hoping to pick up a top prize.

“The butterflies are quite a feature in the center of the roundabout,” Mr Collett said.

“Foraging took about 20 hours a few weeks ago.”

“The frame and flowers are all from Bath and the pots are about two and a half meters wide by one and a half meters deep,” Mr Collett told BBC Wiltshire.

“We’ve had a few features on the roundabout in recent years; we had a bee, an owl and then in 2020 we made three Olympians to celebrate the Games.

“We try to create characters that are interesting to children; something like the Wombles, the Muppets or Mr Men, that sort of thing.”

South West in Bloom is one of 18 regional or national competitions that make up the RHS’s Britain in Bloom, Europe’s largest horticultural campaign.

The aim of the event is to encourage people to improve their communities by planting trees, shrubs and flowers, considering conservation and recycling and cleaning up litter, graffiti and vandalism.

Melksham Bloomers held monthly ‘Town Tidy’ days, with volunteers cleaning, repairing and rearranging street furniture such as planters and gutters, as well as pruning, arranging and planting across the town.

Judging for the 2024 regional competitions will take place throughout July, with RHS representatives visiting Melksham on 8 July.