Wexford Tidy Towns are looking forward to a wonderful Summer in our town and started off the month of May with an open Tidy Towns meeting held on May 4th at Fusion Café for any of our current volunteers and anyone who wanted to join or was interested in finding out more about us. We got some great feedback and all your comments and suggestions were greatly appreciated, if we all put our heads together who knows what we will achieve.

During our Saturday Action Days in May we focused on several different areas of the town. We returned to St. Peter’s Square for a cleanup, paint and tidy of the lovely flowerbeds and boxes there and to tidy up the flowers around the fountain. Another day we spent on the lane ways of the town which were litter picked and swept clean by the wonderful volunteers.

This month also saw the return of the evening clean-ups during the week for the Summer months ahead, with the longer evening and better weather these will help keep the town looking good. On Wednesdays we met at 6pm in the Bullring and on Fridays we met outside A.I.B. at 6pm. We would be delighted to see you at these evening cleanups or at our regular Saturday mornings ones, everyone is always welcome.

We have also being out painting flower boxes around town and with the arrival of Wexford in Bloom’s baskets and boxes of flowers lining the streets of our town thanks to the local businesses and residents who participate in this wonderful annual scheme, we can see Wexford is looking ‘blooming’ wonderful!

On 20th May 11 of the Tidy Towns volunteers went to visit beautiful Skerries thanks to the Journal Journeys competition and Irish Rail scheme which gave free group train journeys. Skerries won the Tidy Towns competition in 2016, we met a lovely lady from their Tidy Towns committee there called Mary Conway and discussed the great work done by Tidy Towns and the benefits to the volunteers who take part too in these local Tidy Town groups around Ireland. Check out this article from thejournal.ie to see how we got on: ‘It’s not just about tidiness, it gives you a network and set of friends’

Some members of the committee were also invited to attend the I.C.A. monthly meeting so they could let us tell them what we do and what we need from organisations like themselves. They are very happy to come on board with Tidy Towns and we are always delighted to work with any organisation to keep Wexford clean and beautiful, just get in touch.

The National Tidy Towns Competition judging will start in June. We will be out every Saturday morning and during some weekday evenings. If you can’t make our cleanups you can also help by keeping outside your home/business litter free, painted and swept. Best of luck to all Tidy Town groups around Ireland for the 2017 competition. Thanks to our volunteers for their continued efforts and to the community of Wexford Town for their support. We look forward to the coming Summer months as we work together to keep our town clean and beautiful.

We started off on the 1st April doing a great spring clean in the town with the use of new machinery including a sweeper, cigarette hoover and wheelie bin, delighted to have these to help us to keep Wexford clean and beautiful. On the 8th April 35 people (and 2 dogs!) turned out for the big Spring Clean at the Rocks, Maudlintown. We collected a stunning 80 bags of rubbish including lots of cans, 1 trolley, 2 fire extinguishers and 1 gas bomb among many other items. Thanks to the volunteers who joined us on the day and it was great to work with other local organisations in the area during this Action Day including St. Mary’s Maudlintown.

During the month of April several other projects were underway. Members of Wexford Tidy Towns identified places for new cigarette bins to go up outside premises in the town. A special thanks to Fun Palace on the quay who were very happy to have one outside their business and they also gave a €100 donation to Wexford Tidy Towns. We really appreciate it as we are a voluntary organisation and we will put the money to good use. Graffiti from Fettit’s Lane was removed and great work was done to paint this and other areas around our town in April.

One of our Action Days took place in the Carcur road area (although tremendous work was done by our volunteers) we were so disappointed to see so much dog fouling, including many dog fouling plastic bags used and then just thrown over the wall! Wexford works with MuttMitts Ireland so there is a plentiful supply of dog fouling bags in the many dispensers and bins around the town, please use them and dispose of them responsibly afterwards. We recommend you always carry plastic bags if you are bringing your dog for a walk. A quick visit to local shops shows there are plenty of inexpensive choices available to buy as well as the many MuttMitt bag dispensers around town. So, there are no excuses please clean up after your dogs.

We have had some reports of illegal dumping, we encourage the public who see any illegal dumping to please ring (053) 9196313 or email environment@wexfordcoco.ie.

Wexford in Bloom are also working hard on getting ready for the Summer months ahead of flowering up the town with the support of local businesses and residents. So keep an eye out for the flower baskets and boxes arriving next month.

Thank you for the continued support from the Wexford Town community and our wonderful volunteers. Please come and join us if you can at any of our regular clean-ups, we need all the volunteers we can get. We need to keep our silver medal and work towards getting the gold award, and we can’t do it without you.