PICTURES Rustington-in-Bloom triumph

Rustington Parish Council chairman Jamie Bennett and Rustington-in-Bloom chairman Steve Perry with South and South East in Bloom officials

For the fourth year running, the village won the Gold Award in the category for villages and town centre, and was also named the overall category winner.

The Ash Lane Walk also won a Gold Award in the floral single site multiple beds category.

The West Sussex Discretionary County Award was presented to Rustington-in-Bloom, as the entry with the highest marks.

Other awards presented on Wednesday included a Silver Gilt for Rustington Methodist Church Garden in the our community category and the RHS National Certificate of Distinction for the Chaucery Memorial.

In the it’s your neighbourhoods category, Outstanding Awards went to the Coastal Workshop, Oakhurst Gardens, Rustington Hall, the Methodist Church Garden, the Chaucery Memorial and the Hidden Twitten.

Carole Ward, clerk of Rustington Parish Council, said: “Such impressive and rewarding results for all involved.

“The community, once again, pulled out all the stops with its support for the In-Bloom campaign, by helping to ensure that all areas of the judging criteria were met and exceeded and, in recognition of this, Certificates of Excellence were awarded to a large number of different groups, clubs, organisations and individuals for their most important contributions towards the success of the Rustington entry.”

As always, members of the Rustington-in-Bloom committee, in partnership with the parish council, organised the 2017 campaign.

They were most grateful for the support of Arun District Council’s cleansing, parks and car parks departments, together with other individual officers from the district council.

Mrs Ward added: “Again, special thanks and appreciation must be conveyed to Ferring Nurseries, without whose outstanding service, expertise and dedication, this remarkable success would, as has been the case in previous years, most certainly not have been attained.”