THE Appleby Smarter project, led by the Appleby Chamber of Trade, is busy planting bulbs around the town to enhance the townscape.

The bulbs have been bought from Stephenson’s thanks to a grant from the Royal Horticultural Society at Harlow Carr in Harrogate.

The planting has been extended to the grounds of Appleby Grammar School with help from the students.

Fittingly, the planting coincided with a visit from Willem Van Oranje school students in the Netherlands.

Appleby Grammar and Willem Van Oranje have now been in partnership for seven years with Dutch students visiting Cumbria in October and Appleby students visiting the Netherlands in July.

This year the Dutch students visited Leeds and Carlisle, including a trip on the Settle-Carlisle railway before seeing the blooms that are so well known from their own country being planted just before they left for the ferry at Hull via a day out in York.