For the third year in a row, Weyburn will be participating at the national level of the Communities in Bloom competition.

"We came close to winning last year," said Community in Bloom (CIB) chairman Glenn Rogers. Last year, the city improved its rating from four blooms in 2005 to five blooms in 2006. This year, the goal is to improve once again, and perhaps claim the prized honour of being the winner of the 5,001 to 10,000 population category.

The Communities in Bloom judges will be arriving in Weyburn tomorrow, July 26, with a meet and greet with city officials in the evening. Mayor Debra Button said, "I believe that Weyburn has never looked better, if you can imagine it not looking good. I can not image a nicer community than Weyburn; the planter boxes around the city are so full of flowers that you cannot see the box anymore."

Judging Weyburn this year are Bob Magill from Bethel, N.B., and Brendan Casement from Edmonton, Alta.

On judging day, Friday, July 27, the judges will start their tour with city officials on the downtown structures and municipal properties, including the water treatment plant and the landfill. Then at noon, the judges head to the River Park gazebo where the winners of the 'Yahoo for Your Yard' contest will be announced, and after lunch they will join Community in Bloom committee members to go on a tour of residential properties and partake in some tourist attractions.

The qualified CIB volunteer judges visit and evaluate each municipality on its overall contributions of municipal council and departments, industry, businesses and the private sector, and volunteer efforts to meet eight criteria. The eight areas of criteria are tidiness, environmental awareness, community involvement, heritage conversation, urban forest management, landscaped areas, floral displays, and turf and ground covers.

The low scoring area of those criteria from last year for Weyburn was environmental awareness. "In previous years we have focused on beautification and done a wonderful job," said Rogers. "Now it is time to highlight what we do for the environment and do a better job on showing the judges everything that this city is working on."

Coun. Nancy Styles, with the environmental resources committee for the City of Weyburn, said, "When you look at the city, you can see that everybody is doing their part."

After another successful clean-up campaign in May, there is no garbage lying around the community. As well the city has placed flower boxes at the Boardwalk and down Government Road to help beautify the city. "It is the little things that the city does all year that helps us stay beautiful," said Styles.

Those little things include the Young Fellows Christmas tree pick up, so used wood chips from the trees can be reused in the spring; paper and cardboard recycling, which has kept 132.79 tonnes out of the landfill as of the end of May; city council looking into different ways of offering recycling programs to residents, such as a pick up system or drop-off system; and city council exploring avenues to ban plastic bags in Weyburn stores, to keep those out of the landfill.

To add to these efforts around the city, there is the little-known fact that Mayor Button is actually a 'Master Composter'. She was trained with several other Weyburn residents in a composting program the city ran with the Weyburn Girls Guides in 2000. The program might not be training any new composters today, but the residents who took it are still at it, in their back yards with their compost piles making that effort to improve the environment.

Since both of the judges this year have an extensive background in urban forest management and landscaped areas, there might be more attention to detail to Weyburn's parks; such as River Park, Jubilee Park and the Tatagwa Parkway.

Magill graduated from the Maritime Forest Ranger School in 1968 and worked as a Forest Technician and Illustrator in the Department of Woodlot Management at Macdonald College. He moved to Fredericton, N.B., in 1971 to complete vocational courses in Horticulture and NS Agricultural College.

Magill also has a background in urban forestry and landscape appraisal, and one of his achievements was to assist in the development of a certification program for both the Landscape and Arboricultural trades.

Casement holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Durham, at Newcastle, England, and a Master of Science in Horticulture from the University of Alberta. He started his career in horticulture at the Alberta Horticultural Research Centre in Brooks as the Research Horticulturist in Ornamentals in 1971, working on the production and testing of trees, shrubs and flowers and giving lectures and workshops.

Casement has been a judge with Communities in Bloom since 1997, is a judge for an All-American Selections Annual Flower Trial, has given many lectures on trees and shrubs, landscaping, and judged horticultural shows and home garden competitions for over 30 years.

Communities in Bloom is a Canadian non-profit organization committed to fostering civic pride, environmental responsibility and beautification through community participation and the challenge of national competition. It has been fostering municipal involvement since 1995, and Weyburn has participated at the National level since 2005.

Weyburn entered the provincial competition in 2004 and won in its population category, then in 2005 a decision was made to advance to the national competition. The first year competing at the National level, Weyburn earned a four-bloom rating and then improved on that level by earning a five-bloom rating last year, in 2006.

This year Weyburn will be competing against the communities of Merritt, B.C., Dauphin, Man., Aylmer, Ont., Minto, Ont., Goderick, Ont., Sackville, N.B., Amherst, N.S., and New Glasgow, N.S.