By Ken Duffy

Swords Tidy Towns attended the National Tidy Towns Awards in Croke Park on the 6th Oct where we were successful in retaining our Silver Medal status making it six in a row, just like the Dubs. There were only three tickets made available to each Tidy Towns group as the venue as it only caters for 600 seated invited guests. Naturally there was indeed a little disappointment within the group as we only lost out by one point to Drogheda for the Gold Medal, so close and yet so far. (well done, Drogheda) We organised a special celebratory get together after the awards for our members, the Old Schoolhouse was the venue. We gathered in the Whiskey Room which was kindly made available to us by management to celebrate in private, they also provided us with complimentary food platers for which we are very, very grateful. We held our Annual Tidiest Estate Competition in mid-September. The standard this year was very high which made our independent judge’s job that much more difficult. We are very grateful to the sponsors of this year’s competition Redmond Property Estate Agents and Hennessy Perrozzi LLP Solicitors for their generous contributions and for their participation in presenting the winners with their awards: Tidiest Estate Winners Were Joint First Place: Carlton Court and Highfields Second Place: The Nurseries – Third Place: Hilltown Enviro Awareness Group River Valley Rise and the Special Bio Diversity Award: Comyn Manor Again, a big thank you to our independent judges Ann O’Meara, Micheal Connolly from the Fingal Horticultural Society and Martin Nulty of Nulty Landscaping. Well done to everyone who took part. Next year we hope to introduce new categories and broaden the scope of our competition, so keep up the great work and we will see you all again next year.