Step back in time to see how young gardeners improved Horsham

Each of the school’s 207 pupils planted some 20 mixed daffodil bulbs.

The bulbs were provided gratis by Horsham District Council as part of 1994’s parish bulb planting initiative.

Park services manager, Evans Giles, said schools and parish councils were offered the chance to join in the project as the council wanted ‘to involve everyone in the community so they would appreciate the value of open spaces’.

In the case of St Mary’s he hoped that ‘seeing the results of their labour will help the children feel part of the open spaces and respect them’.

Headteacher Margaret Eldridge said the school was ‘delighted’ to take part in the project.

She added: “We are very conscious of the environment especially since the opening of our environmental wildlife garden, which has proved to be a great success.”

David Jenkins, chairman of the council’s leisure services committee, said: “We are delighted that so many parishes are taking part in the district.

“Of the 33 parishes in the district, 26 are taking an active part.

“We are looking forward to a mass of colour next spring.”

Elswehere the Dunsfold Amateur Dramatic Society took Noel Coward’s comedy, ‘I’ll leave it to you’ and turned it into an evening of first class entertainment.

Under Shirley Dubbins’ direction the well disciplined group showed its usual fine attention to detail as they brought their own magic to the performance.

Meanwhile keen gardeners Leslie Amey and Harold Penticost were top of the crops when it came to their allotments.

The pair won first and second prize respectively in Horsham District Council’s best kept allotment 1994 competition.

Both were presented with garden centre vouchers by council chairman Stephane Walker.

She said: “It is the second year of the competition and I was so impressed by the quantity of vegetables and flowers that can be grown in an allotment.

“I was struck by how well organised they were and the enormous size of some of the vegetables due, I’m sure, to liberal quantities of manure.”

Winner Mr Amey of Stirling Way, Horsham, who had his Chesworth Allotment Society site in Kennedy Road, Horsham, for 26 years, was pleased with his win.

He added: “It’s the first time I have won and that was a big surprise.

“It’s just a question of catching the judges’ eye.”

Mr Amey spent two hours a day five days a week tending his allotment.

Second prize went to Harold Penticost of Eversfield Road who had two plots at the Bennetts Road Allotment Association site in Horsham.

He said tending his plot kept him healthy and attributed the health of his plot to ‘keeping down the weeds and lots of manure’.

The competition attracted 37 entries from ten of the council’s Horsham and Shipley sites.

Points were given for the general appearance of the plot, pest and disease control and more.