HANGING baskets are brightening up the Red Lion Yard this summer for the first time to encourage people to shop in the yard.

Angus McPhie, landlord of the shopping area, has paid for the baskets on the understanding that the traders water them themselves.

They have been put together by Alan French who with his wife Linda also looks after and watersthe granite planters in the yard.

Angus said: ‘The baskets are stunningly beautiful and we want to blow our own trumpet about them and encourage people to come and see them and enjoy the shops here.

‘The challenge we’ve got is to get people who park in Waitrose car park to actually walk into the town through the yard.

‘This is the first time we have put the baskets up and it is about improving people’s shopping experience.

‘There are 18 different independent shops here and we want to encourage people to come and have a look. I’ve provided 15 baskets and put them up and said “right guys, you water them” and they are willing to do that.

‘I’m delighted with the appearance of them and what I’m particularly pleased about is the feedback from other people.’

Linda said she felt the baskets really brightened up the town. ‘They are looking really good at the moment,’ she said.

Elsewhere in the town, the hanging baskets have not been put up this year because there is not enough money to pay for someone to water them.

Instead, Everything Okehampton, the group of volunteers who have taken over many of the responsibilities of the Okehampton Chamber of Trade, have put up custom-made flags outside the shops in the centre of town to bring some colour to the main street.

Christine Marsh, from Everything Okehampton, said an appeal to businesses to water the hanging baskets in the centre of town had fallen on deaf ears and that Everything Okehampton could not afford to hire someone to water them this year on top of the £1,600 cost of the baskets themselves.

‘The summer is a long time and they need watering twice a day,’ she said.

‘It is purely a question of cost.’