GREEN-FINGERED customers have been celebrating after their gardens came up smelling of roses in Halton Housing Trust’s annual garden competition.

From creative landscaped gardens to beautiful hanging baskets, the Trust has rewarded the outstanding efforts of gardening enthusiasts who have transformed their land into green havens.

In a tough competition, Alfred Horne of  Runcorn, wowed the judges to scoop the prize for best garden. Meanwhile John Stowe, of Crow Wood Lane, Widnes, claimed the honour of best new garden.

Widnes customer Vivienne Warriner, of Dunsford, was also jumping for joy after taking the award for best communal garden.

Other winners included Stephen Evans of Sycamore Road, Runcorn, who claimed the award for the best pot/ container/ hanging basket and four-year-old Hannah Fowler who won the children’s colouring competition for the best garden drawing.

Nick Atkin, Chief Executive of Halton Housing Trust, said: “The garden competition has proved massively popular for our customers and it has been great to see so many people taking part.”

Set up to recognise the hard work and achievement of customers who make a positive contribution to their home and help improve the visual appearance of the local community, customers’ gardens were judged on presentation, colour condition and imagination.

The judging panel which included customers, staff and representatives from the Trust’s landscape gardeners Vale Construction, were left impressed by the obvious love and care that entrants put into their gardens.

Nick Atkin added: “The competition shows there are a lot of people out there who take a massive amount of pride in their gardens and this is our way of recognising the contribution this makes to the overall enhancement of the areas in which they live.

“This was underlined by the extremely high standard of the entries, which gave us one of the closest contests in years and the Trust would like to congratulate the winners and all those customers who took part.”