Eight Criteria

1. Tidiness
   Tidiness includes an overall tidiness effort made by the municipality, businesses, institutions, and residents of the community. Elements for evaluation are green spaces (parks, etc), medians, boulevards, sidewalks, streets, municipal, commercial, institutional and residential properties, ditches, road shoulders, vacant lots and buildings and signage, with regard to weeds, maintenance and repair, graffiti and vandalism.
   
   
2. Environmental Action
   Environmental Action includes efforts and achievement by the municipality, businesses, institutions and residents of the community, with respect to: policies, by-laws and best practices, 3-R initiatives (reduce/reuse/recycle), waste reduction, landfill sites, hazardous waste, water conservation, naturalization, environmental stewardship activities, and environmentally friendly transportation, under the guiding principles of sustainable developement.
   
   
3. Heritage Conservation
   

   Heritage Conservation includes efforts made by the municipality, businesses and institutions, and residents to preserve heritage within their community. Priority in evaluation is given to natural heritage, as well as the integration of landscape and streetscapes as it pertains to the built heritage of a community. Overall preservation of traditions and customs through year-round festivals and celebrations, events and parades, heritage foods and the arts, as well as the participation of groups such as the Historical Society are considered.

   
   
4. Urban Forestry
   Urban Forestry includes efforts made by the municipality, businesses, and institutions, and residents with regards to written policies, by-laws, standards for tree management (selection, planting, and maintenance), long and short-term management plans, tree replacement policies, tree inventory, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), heritage, memorial and commemorative trees.
   
   
5. Landscape
   This section of the evaluation supports all efforts to create an environment showcasing the overall surroundings: parks & grounds, green spaces, streetscapes, and including turf & groundcovers. The overall plan and design must be suitable for the intended use and location on a year-round basis. Elements for evaluation include: native and introduced materials; balance of plants, materials and constructed elements; appropriate integration of hard  surfaces and art elements; use turf and groundcovers. Landscape design should harmonize the interests of municipal, commercial, and residential sectors of the community.
   
   
6. Turf & Groundcovers
   Included in the Landscape section of the evaluation form, Turf & Groundcovers remains a criteria award. This criterion relates to turf management programs, maintenance, policies, standards, and best practices, as well as quality and use of groundcovers.
   
   
   

7. Floral Displays
   "Floral Displays" evaluates the efforts made by the municipality, businesses and institutions, and residential sectors of the community to design, plan, execute, and maintain floral displays of high quality standards. Evaluation includes the design and arrangements of flowers and plants (annuals, perennials, bulbs, ornamental grasses) in the context of originality, distribution, location, diversity and balance, colour, and harmony.  This pertains to flowerbeds, carpet bedding, containers, baskets and window boxes. 

   
   
8. Community Involvement
   Community Involvement includes public involvement in various community programs and projects. recognition of volunteers, and support toward community initiatives by the municipal, business, and private sector. Recognized as such a major component of the overall program, it has become a key sector to be included in each of the sections, and still retains a specific criteria award.

In addition to these eight criteria, special awards are presented to the communities every year, including awards for sustainable developement, community of gardeners, youth involvement, land reclamation, and best blooming community.

Each year the Best Blooming Community designation is awarded to the community which achieved the hight aggregate score in both the Communities in Bloom and WinterLights Celebrations programs for a given year.
2009: Charlottetown, PEI

2008: Stratford, ON
2007: Kelowna, BC
2006: Brampton, ON