Vote for your favourite park and help to pick the UK’s People’s Choice award
The award winning Spa Gardens in Ripon are in with a chance of receiving the accolade of ‘nation’s favourite park’, following its success in this year’s Green Flag Awards.
For the 15th consecutive year the park was recognised as one of the best green spaces in the UK in the awards, run by Keep Britain Tidy. A Green Flag flying overhead is a sign to the public that the park boasts the highest possible standards, is beautifully maintained and has excellent facilities.
Ripon Spa Gardens was also the first park in Yorkshire to ever be awarded a Green Flag.
A record breaking 1,582 parks and green spaces were awarded a Green Flag this year and now the time has come to whittle that list down to just one, which will walk away with the UK’s People’s Choice award. For this award the official Green Flag judges take a back seat and the public gets a chance to vote for their favourite park.
Harrogate Borough Council is encouraging people to vote for the Spa Gardens in the centre of Ripon, with its Victorian bandstand, Alice in Wonderland wood carvings, popular café, crazy golf, bowling pavilion and green, and imaginative flower displays.
To vote for the Spa Gardens, simply go to www.greenflagaward.org, select your country or region on the interactive map, find your favourite park or green space and click the ‘vote for this site’ button.
The vote opens today (Tuesday 1 September) and closes at noon on 30 September 2015. The winner of the People’s Choice award will be announced in October.
Councillor Michael Harrison is the council’s Cabinet Member for the Environment.
Cllr Harrison said:
Achieving a Green Flag Award 15 years running is a tremendous achievement in itself but to go one better and be named this year’s ‘nation’s favourite park’ would be an incredible accolade, and no more than the hard working parks team and ‘Friends’ of the gardens deserve.
The Spa Gardens are a little oasis in the centre of Ripon, much loved and enjoyed by over 80,000 people a year. If every one of those visitors who have experienced its charms voted for it, the park would surely be in with a great chance of walking off with the People’s Choice.
Paul Todd, Green Flag Award manager said:
We all have a favourite park, whether it’s our local green space or a special park we’ll travel miles to visit. Following another record breaking year for the Green Flag Award, we are urging everyone to vote for their own favourite park, so we can crown one of these 1,582 special parks as the People’s Choice 2015.
