A VIDEO showcasing Blooming Haddington volunteers’ efforts throughout the year will be shown in a bid to impress Keep Scotland Beautiful judges.

Hard-working volunteers are looking to build on the success of last year’s debut in the nationwide competition.

The group won a Silver Gilt medal and was also awarded Best Newcomer in the medium town category at the first attempt but are hoping to go even better this time round.

Judges are due to visit Haddington next Friday (July 31), when they will be given a tour of the town and shown the video.

Clare Scott, one of the Blooming Haddington committee members, told the Courier: “We did a video last year and the reason we did that was we had been talking with North Berwick In Bloom and we saw their video and thought it created a great impression for the judges.

“We are trying to do something a little bit better this year and taking the judges’ comments on board from last year.” Clare’s daughter Katie took on the role of Blooming Haddington secretary as part of her Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and it was then that former Knox Academy pupil Rhona Taylor, who is going on to study film at Edinburgh Napier University, helped put the video together.

She said: “Katie approached me and asked me to put together a film, just like a picture slideshow. They are trying to document what is going on with the various projects.” About 100 photographs were handed over, which are put together alongside three tracks – Come Home, Butterfly and Rainbows – by local band Dropkick, which will act as a soundtrack to the six-minute video.

Rhona stressed it was fairly straightforward, while the volunteers “had done all the hard work, the organising and gathering” of the photographs.

The video was premiered on Monday night to committee members and Clare was pleased with the end result.

She said: “We are just making some tweaks to it now for the judges’ visit on July 31.

“We are just going to make some more credits to the end of the film to recognise the contributions to all the different groups and put more information in about the Oriental garden.”