Exmouth in Bloom celebrate their success this week. Photo by Terry Ife. Ref exe 2016-38-12TI To order your copy of this photograph visit www.exmouthjournal.co.uk and click on myphotos24

Volunteers have once again struck gold after winning a slew of awards at the recent South West in Bloom competition.

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At an awards ceremony in Weston-super-Mare, Exmouth in Bloom won an RHS Gold Award in the class competing for the St Bridget Cup.

It was the fourth time in five years they have won a gold award –in 2010 the team did not enter because district council budget cuts meant they had to rethink their fundraising strategy.

The team also collected four ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood’ awards including Kingston Road Community Group who were recognised for their restoration of a Devon bank with a level 1 ‘Establishing Award’.

Camperdown Terrace gained a level two ‘Improving Award’ while Brixington Primary School achieved a level three ‘Developing Award’.

Exmouth Quay residents achieved an ‘Outstanding Award’.

Exmouth also received two discretionary awards, the first being the Viridor School Composting trophy, which went to Brixington Primary School.

The Barry Cruse MBE trophy for the best website of the competition entrants was received in tribute to the late Debs Graham, daughter of Exmouth in Bloom Chairman Pat Graham, who died earlier this year.

Pat said: “We didn’t quite manage to win the St Bridget Cup which went to Newquay, but there is always next year. We shall at least be able to fly our gold award flag again.

“We are disappointed that we didn’t regain the St Bridget Cup, but we are delighted with the gold award

“The category is always very tight, and I think there were four towns (in the large coastal town category) who received gold awards which is quite a lot given that not many gold awards were given out in other categories this year, but a lot of silver gilts.

“We shall continue with our wildflower bank (on Marine way) and perhaps next year we will increase the numbers of our neighbourhood entries to 12 and we will be contacting our members about this.

“Thank you to everyone.” who helped and our friends group who without them this would not have been possible.”