The chairwoman of Cambuslang in Bloom has won a top gong for her work in sprucing up the town.
Linda Wallace was honoured with a South Lanarkshire Council Provost Community Award.
She was nominated by Councillor John Bradley for her work on brightening up the main street in Cambuslang.
Speaking to Lanarkshire Live about how she came to be involved in the group, Linda said: “The whole project came out about five years ago when the Scottish Government announced the Town Centre Regeneration Fund.
“The fund aimed to enable local authorities to stimulate and support place-based economic investment that encouraged communities. We decided to apply for it.
“There are several issues with the town centre – there’s a lack of investment, uneven pavements, and bins laying all over the places. The unattractiveness was affecting shops and locals.
“We wanted to do something to encourage people to feel pride in Cambuslang, so in partnership with Cambuslang Community Council, we created Cambuslang in Bloom in 2015. We secured £25,000 for the info structure, compost plants, and barriers.
“I became involved because of my previous experience and helped with the bid writing and my role just expanded from there and I became the chairwoman.
“While we were in the planning stage we started to recruit volunteers of all ages with very limited experience with plants.
“We do a big plant out every year on the first weekend in June, some of the elective members come along and it’s a fun thing to do and we have a great turnout.
“We also have people from care homes around and they help us with the care of the plants.”
Very early on, the project hit a wall due to the difficulty of raising funds.
Large plants were expensive and fundraising was a lot of work, but Linda found a solution and for the last two years has grown the plants from plug plants and seeds in her greenhouse, which has saved 90 per cent of costs.
Linda and the volunteers start with the plants in June and keep them going till October.
And Linda, who studied biological sciences at university and grew plants as part of her dissertation, added: “The award came out of the blue, it was one of the councillors, John Bradley, who nominated me.”
Councillor Bradley added: “Linda has been the coordinator of CIB since its foundation and manages a team of 20 volunteers, from the plant-out in the spring to the dry weeks, Linda is on the main street with volunteers making sure the plants are well cared for.
“The result is a brilliant display every year which gets great appreciation from local residents and shopkeepers. She is hugely deserving of this award.”
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