Amberol’s service is ‘first class’ says Townhill Community Council
Townhill is a large former coal mining village near Dunfermline in Scotland with a population of around 1,000 people. The local community council takes great pride in maintaining the village’s public areas, including sports facilities, woodland and the most recent addition, the newly renovated Miners’ Heritage Park.
The council first heard of Amberol when Keith Jackson, Parks and Community Events Officer from Fife Council, gave Townhill a square planter to try out. Having found that the self-watering function reduced the need for regular maintenance, the council decided to invest in a range of Amberol containers. Products currently in use around the village include 18 hanging baskets as well as a range of planters of different shapes and sizes, such as railing baskets and octagonal planters.
Ronnie Cowan, Chairman of Townhill Community Council, explains why they chose Amberol's products.
"We were really impressed by the high quality, durability and time saving benefits of the planters. Buying the containers did away with the annual maintenance needs of previous years. All of our containers are now supplied by Amberol, replacing the wooden ones which had started to show signs of wear and tear as well as requiring more maintenance.”
Townhill also run a community scheme in which containers are located outside small businesses who then commit to plant and maintain them, creating attractive floral displays in public areas.
"The service from Amberol has also been first class," adds Ronnie. "They really get to know their customers and what they need. I would be happy to recommend Amberol and we hope to be in a position to purchase more of their products in the future."
Ronnie believes that using self-watering containers has helped the village succeed in local and national horticultural competitions. He comments:
"Our achievements in both the Beautiful Fife and Beautiful Scotland campaigns can be attributed in part to having floral displays in self-watering containers, as well as to the hard work and imagination of our Community Council and volunteers if course."
Three words that Townhill Community Council use to describe Amberol products:
- Durable
- Efficient
- Attractive
Amberol are also well known amongst local authorities and the leisure industry for their range of litter bins and street furniture, all made from recyclable polyethylene. Having been impressed by the quality of the planters, Townhill decided to invest in two of Amberol's talking litter bins.
Ronnie had already heard about the speaking bins when they were installed in Liverpool in 2011. The council opted to purchase two bins, one in the shape of a chick and the other in the distinctive shape of Percy penguin, the unofficial Amberol mascot. The Townhill bins were customised by creating special messages which are recorded on a different voice box for each one. The messages are activated by a sensor which detects when litter has been placed in the bins’ ‘beaks’.
The chick bin features a thank you message recorded by local children from the Townhill Primary School, whilst the penguin sings a sample from the ‘Thank you very much’ song from the musical Scrooge, and also features Oliver Twist’s famous phrase ‘Please sir, can I have some more?’
“Having heard about singing bins being used in cities in England, I thought they would be a perfect addition to our Miners’ Heritage Park,” comments Ronnie. “The chick and penguin look great in the children’s play area and they have been really well received so far. Both adults and children love the novelty of being thanked in song for depositing their litter. Anything which helps to keep our beautiful park clean and tidy has to be a good thing.”
To find out more about how Amberol’s products can help you, visit our website at www.amberol.co.uk, call 01773 830 930 or email info@amberol.co.uk.
