HUDDERSFIELD will be sporting a colourful new look all winter.

Tens of thousands of blooms are being planted throughout Kirklees to keep it looking colourful over the winter months.

And their creation has been helped by a machine which has recycled old flower cuttings by turning them into compost.

The bright flowers that adorned the many parks, public spaces and roundabouts of the area are now being dug out and replaced by over 200,000 winter bedding plants.

The new blooms, which include colourful polyanthus, forget-me-nots and double daisies, will be planted over the next couple of weeks in places like Dewsbury, Holmfirth and areas in and around Huddersfield, including St George’s Square.

Paul Marshall, manager of Kirklees Council’s nursery at Bradley, which supplies all the plants, said: “The plants will be going out everywhere in Kirklees, including all the parks, gardens, cemeteries and other public spaces.

“It’s a massive operation as we have to get well over 200,000 plants out over a two-week period, and this includes taking all the old plants out and forking over and weeding the flower beds.

“We’re trying to make the area as colourful as possible to stop it looking bare over the winter – last year we had an excellent display throughout the winter which lasted well into the spring, which is when we plant the new flowers.

“We will have an ever greater splash of colour this year because there are things opening and coming into flower now.

“This is because of the warmer weather. We’ve had a good autumn and it’s not been too wet, so we’ve been able to grow some really nice plants.”

As part of the plant-growing process, this year, nursery staff have been putting back into the ground what has been taken out– as the compost being used to enrich the flower beds have been produced from prunings and cuttings taken from the nursery and other parks and open spaces.

Instead of sending the offcuts to the rubbish tip, they have been reduced to a rich, dark compost with a shredding machine.

The machine, hired from Calderdale Council, shredded a large pile of prunings in a day at the Bradley nursery.

The cost of using the machine, which devours anything up to four inches in diameter, saved on the cost of sending the prunings to the rubbish tip and also on the cost of buying compost.

Mr Marshall commented: “It’s a big machine, over five metres long and a lot of prunings and waste can be loaded, which are then ground up to make compost.

“We have used flowers from old hanging baskets and plants at the nursery to make the compost– the machine can also be used to recycle old Christmas trees.”