To celebrate the Year of the Garden, and pay homage to Bradford's agricultural roots, the BWG Library hosted a Growing Event on Saturday, featuring crafts for kids, apple cider, along with a rock painting and garden growing contest.
Residents were invited to bring in their weirdest, wackiest and most unusually shaped vegetables and plants as part of the growing contest, judged by the town's Healthy Communities Advisory Committee.
Earlier this month, the library handed out free rocks for kids to take home and paint, bring back for the contest and be displayed in front of the library entrance.
"Being an agricultural community, the Healthy Communities Committee wanted to recognize our surrounding environment and get families outside to enjoy what nature has to offer," said Coun. Peter Ferragine who sits on the Healthy Advisory Committee. "Today, it's too easy to get locked in on technology...we don't want to lose the importance of being outside and getting your hands dirty."
In the growing contest, First place went to Mila and Owen for the oversized oval-shaped pumpkin that they had grown by accident in their garden.
"Within their garden, a pumpkin had started to grow, so they watched and cared for it until the day of the contest," said Ferragine. "We were very impressed."
Second place went to Alex, for his 12-pound green zucchini at 21.5 inches long and 5.5 inches wide.
And Third place went to Joy for her large sunflower head submission.
"It was great to see families get involved and the entries we received were amazing," said Ferragine.
The best-painted rock contest was a little bit harder for the committee to judge.
"Every rock was so creative that it was very hard to choose a favourite," said Ferragine."The committee placed all of the entries into a draw and pulled four random winners."
Winners of the growing contest received gift cards to Ferragine Greenhouses and winners of the rock painting contest won a gift card to Indigo and a pumpkin stuffed animal.
Ferragine said he was pleased with the outcome of the contest.
"The items that were created and grown for this contest brought families together and helped little ones be creative with their projects," he said.
Deputy Mayor James Leduc who also sits on the Committee and took part in the judging commended the library staff for helping organize the day's events.
"To see all the families yesterday participating in the arts we had was very exciting for the staff of the library, they do such a great job, kudos to our library staff," he said. "Thank you to all that helped yesterday from our committee. Our Chair of the committee (Ferragine) did an excellent job. Hopefully, we can return to that committee again next term with a new purpose to help deal with Climate Change initiatives in our community."
