Not only have the winners of this year’s Keep Busselton Beautiful Garden Competition been awarded for their effort to make their garden a beautiful place and their street that bit nicer to walk along, but a joint effort by people in the community has won the town the Community Action award in the Tidy Towns competition.

Very pleased with this year’s garden competition entrants, Keep Busselton Beautiful Committee president Di Carter said it was the most successful year they’d had in a long time, with many gardens participating.

Although Busselton didn’t win the Tidy Towns title, she was also very pleased with the “great cooperation around town” in terms of cleaning and tidying up Busselton for the Tidy Towns competition.

“We’ve had a big busy year,” she said proudly, mentioning the regular and one-off clean-ups done by local schools and other community members, groups and businesses.

“We’ve had big cooperation from the shire, especially from the parks and gardens (department). They’ve been on site and helped enormously.”

The Community Action award was given to Busselton to acknowledge the public’s involvement in helping the community.

Mrs Carter said the Busselton Community Garden, the Busselton Hospice Garden and the butt-out bin campaign, run by Gilbert Stokman from the Department of Fisheries, played a great part in that.

The ‘butt it’s littering’ campaign was initiated as a response to the many butts found on the beaches and in the ocean, contaminating it with the chemicals found in butts.

As a result six cigarette butt bins have been put in place along the Busselton foreshore, funded by the shire.

Busselton was also commended for its management of leavers, the Department of Fisheries Fishing Line Collectors waste management project

“In our opinion the town’s looking very good and much tidier,” Mrs Carter said.

“There’s not so much rubbish about, the roundabouts are improving and the gardens and household gardens are looking neat.”