Pupils battle it out to be top of the Christmas trees

MORE than 300 schoolchildren took part in the annual Christmas tree decorating competition at the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

With a theme of ‘A Traditional Welsh Christmas’, pupils from across Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and as far as Cardiff decorated their Christmas trees using remade, reused or recycled materials.

Workshops were held throughout the morning and included decorating pine cones and making recycling bags from newspaper, jewellery from pasta and festive table decorations.

Officers from the council’s waste and recycling section led one of the workshops and Cllr Jim Jones, the Executive Board Member for Environmental and Public Protection helped to judge the best dressed trees.

The other judges were Wynn Morgan from CWM Environmental, Liz James from Careers Wales West, Diana Organ from D L Organ & Co who donated the Christmas trees for the event, Nicola Bennett from Tata Steel and Jane Richmond from the botanic garden.

First prize went to Ysgol Y Castell in Kidwelly and they won as much Merlin’s Magic Compost as they need and help from CWM Environmental to set up their own school garden.

Second prize went to Ysgol Llys Hywel in Whitland who won a wormery donated by the council’s waste and recycling section; and third prize went to Pontarddulais Comprehensive School who were given a water butt donated by Dŵr Cymru.

Cllr Jones said: “It was a fantastic day and gave schools from throughout the area the chance to take part in a recycling and reuse event and have a great deal of festive fun at the same time.

“Hopefully the event will help to raise awareness of why it is so important that we reuse and recycle as much as we can, particularly at Christmas time when we tend to produce a lot more rubbish than at other times of the year.”

The trees are on display in the Great Glass House.