'Westlake in Bloom' Entrants: Start Your Planning

It’s time to start planning: Westlake in Bloom is just one growing season away.

One of the city’s most enduring beautification projects, Westlake in Bloom, not only acknowledges those with green thumbs, but helps enhance the city’s summer presentation.

The city bills the event as “ a friendly competition among residents, organizations and businesses in the Westlake community competing in categories ranging from window boxes to residential landscaping.”

Each year, hundreds of participants compete for first, second and third place awards. Special efforts are recognized with Awards of Distinction.

Last week, recently retired planning director Bob Parry considered the event, which started in 2002, as one of the “Top 10” projects in the city in the past 25 years.

 “The city has been involved in our own little Westlake in Bloom,” Parry said of the event, which was originally part of a national contest. “It’s done a lot for the city’s beautification. It’s really improved the city. “

The city is now accepting applications in a number of categories including apartment or condominium complex, church, business, hotels/motels, garden boxes, residential landscaping, various gardens and Hilliard Boulevard flower boxes.

Deadline to enter is Friday, June 28 at 5 p.m.

Click here for the 2013 entry form. Click here for contest rules and details.

Last year’s winners included first-place winners Inge Moorman (vegetable garden); Robert and Michelle Walsh (shade garden); Al and Jean Sabo (residential landscaping, small yard); Richard and Marilynn Breudigam (residential landscaping, large yard); Kris and Bob Zanotti (patio garden, single-family home); Rae-Ann Suburban (best nursing home/assisted living); Constructability, Inc. (best Hilliard Blvd. flower box); the Eberling family (greatest visual impact, Evergreen Cemetery fence boxes); St. Ladislas Church (best church); Cleveland Door Controls, Inc., Debbie Meuser (best business); and Crossings Village (best apartment or condominium complex).