KEEN gardeners and horticulturalists in Melksham are eagerly looking forward to the town being put in the spotlight in a new BBC2 series, ‘Britain in Bloom’, to be broadcast next Wednesday.

They will gather in front of TVs to watch last year’s South West in Bloom entry for Melksham being featured in the new series, which is being presented by former greengrocer Chris Bavin.

Cllr Kathy Iles, who chairs South West in Bloom for Melksham, said: “Our group will be gathering at the Conservative Club to watch the programme, which is being aired at 6.30pm on BBC2.

“It was four days hard work filming for a half hour programme, with everything being done six to eight times so they could get the right angles.

“We even had to change our outfits to make people believe it was being filmed over a period of time.”

The new series follows local communities taking part in the UK’s largest and most popular annual floral competition.

Britain in Bloom – run by the Royal Horticultural Society - takes place in towns and villages across the country and is always fiercely competitive.

The Melksham team have been entering the South West in Bloom regional awards for the past five years, but they’ve never won gold. In previous years, they were awarded silver and silver gilt.

Last year they upped the ante in order to finally bag the top award but work on the long-running and controversial £660,000 Market Place redevelopment threatened to scupper their chances.

TV presenter Chris Bavin headed to the market town to film the 30-strong group as they put into action their grand plan to win gold.

The programme will cover them putting up home-made flags and planting new floral displays to bring colour to the town’s High Street and its heritage quarter, as well as completely revamping the floral beds around Melksham Library.

It focuses on the efforts the group made to tidy up the town and to get the floral displays looking their very best in the six-week run up to judging day.

In the process, the group called upon the services of their secret weapon, their perfectionist gardener, Carl Gill, the former Head of Horticulture at Lackham College, who was brought in to make sure everything was up to gold winning standard.

But the hard work was almost scuppered by disaster in the Market Place, where Wiltshire Council felled two trees the day before the judging was due to take place.

Kathy said: “The night before, we had swept the place clean and picked up every leaf that had dropped to the ground.

“The following morning I went down and it was a scene of devastation. I just burst into tears in the Market Place.

“But in hindsight it probably did us a huge favour because it showed the judges that we would carry on regardless and overcome all the obstacles.”

She added: “I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified about the programme. During the filming, it was quite fraught and nail-biting but it will be interesting to see how they present us.”

In the meantime, work has already begun on planning and preparation for this year’s South West in Bloom, with Melksham hoping to retain its gold standard award.

“It’s a year-round operation and we already have plans for floral displays around the town’s War Memorial and the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

“We will also be celebrating the 100th anniversaries of the Royal Air Force and the Suffragette Movement, with some women and some men being given the right to vote.”