Keep Victoria Beautiful organises the awards and project manager Gary Mogford said residents could expect between 150 and 180 guests across the weekend, which was the final result of months of hard work by communities and organisers.

Related: Wimmera groups, individuals recognised as 2019 Tidy Town finalists

The Dimboola Town Committee has played a huge role in organising the weekend itself.

Committee member Jan Ballard said organising began as soon as the town won the 2018 Tidy Town of the Year award, as the winner hosts the following year.

"Once you know you've won it you're busy planning," she said.

"A couple of girls came up from Melbourne (from Keep Victoria Beautiful) and helped us through the procedures and what has to happen. It has been very busy and there is a lot to learn."

Related: Dimboola named Victoria's tidiest town in 2018

That included the logistics of hosting up to a couple of hundred people.

"We haven't got a lot of accommodation in town but hopefully the visitors will come early on Saturday and spend the day in town," Ms Ballard said.

"It will be great for business."

Mr Mogford said town committees were usually heavily involved in the awards and often submitted projects for consideration, or the project organisers themselves did.

"Some towns throughout the year collect news paper articles which they believe fit into the criteria for the Tidy Towns, and once the categories are open they will track them down (and submit them)," he said.

"Other towns do it by word of mouth or just by knowing what's happening in town without having to chase the newspaper articles. They will just know what's been happening and once the awards are open, they approach the person running the project (and suggest they enter).

"A lot of them are run by the town committee and it's then the town committee who will enter the awards."

Mr Mogford said judges then hit the road, visiting the site of each project and then announcing the finalists. Part of the reasoning for racking up the road miles is so country towns get the same face to face time as metropolitan towns, he said.

"Then work starts on organizing the actual event," he said.

"We have to establish what facilities are going to be available to us in the town."

To be in the running for Tidy Town of the Year a town has to have a minimum of six entries.

"There are a number of towns where they will put an entry into every category, and there are others that have just one entry," Mr Mogford said.

"The awards are largely made up of entries from community groups and volunteers. There are some council projects in among them, and in fact one of the categories is community and government partnerships - and that can be any level of government - but the majority are about communities.

"To be honest, that's what the awards are primarily about - it's about recognising and acknowledging the work done by communities across regional Victoria."

Many of those staying in Dimboola for the awards will have the opportunity to tour Little Desert National Park, take a bus tour of Pink Lake, take part in a speed sprouting workshop and enjoy local goods and produce at the Star Theatre Market.

Jane Byrne from St Joseph's Primary School in Sorrento will present the speed sprouting workshop, which will demonstrate how to build habitat for mini beasts to boost the local environment an dlearn about indigenous, sensory, edible and medicinal gardens.

The Dimboola Town Committee will put on a free breakfast for guests on Saturday morning.

"We're very grateful to all our volunteers that have pulled together to make the weekend of the awards successful," Ms Ballard said.

"The (Hindmarsh) Shire have been great because the recreation reserve is a huge area to mow and the Shire have been out tidying."

Dimboola and Horsham both submitted numerous projects, and the tiny town of Rainbow submitted one too.

The Wimmera Mail-Times spoke to volunteers involved with some of those projects:

The Salvation Army, Horsham 'The Patch'

Liz Loke is a committee member of The Patch, which is a community garden in Horsham.

The garden has been running since November 2018, and it operates and built on land owned by the Salvation Army.

"Part of the idea is to be able to grow food that the Salvation Army can use in their community lunches and and can distribute to people in need," Ms Loke said.

"We'll also use the space as a community education facility and run workshops in the space which teach people about composting and gardening and things.

"People can bring food and we'll bring ours, so what that does is prevent waste."

People can also hire plots for a small annual fee.

"We're lucky to have that space," Ms Loke said.

There is also a social benefit to the space.

"People can get together in their own garden or in the general garden and have a conversation, because lots of people are in need of that as well," Ms Loke said.

"It's part of reaching out into the community and providing a place for that where things happen in a more natural or organic way.

"If we can encourage people to compost, grow locally, share, and not get things trucked in, so it's good for the environment, good for health, good for the community - it's wins all round."

Ms Loke said if people are interested in finding out more about the community garden they can follow the Facebook page or call her on 0419 366 139

"I'd be more than happy to show them around," Ms Loke said.

Rainbow Progress Association, Rainbow 'The Oasis - Community Hub'

Adelle Rohrsheim was the project manager of The Oasis from 2016 to 2018.

The town received a Regional Arts Victoria grant worth $350,000 to transform it into a hub.

"There were only six towns in Victoria that got that grant to do something based around arts in their community," Ms Rohrsheim said.

"So Rainbow saw the opportunity for the abandoned old primary school, which was over 100 years old, to have another life and make it active again, because it's a beautiful old sandstone building."

From there the restoration began.

"What we did was fix up the building, clean up the grounds and the garden," Ms Rohrsheim said.

"When the community put in for a grant they broke it into three aspects - to have an oasis desert garden, a cultural exchange ... and to get the school up and running so the community could take on the running of it."

The hub has since become a unique space for travelling musicians as well as community members.

"We had the Big Sky Festival and there are lots of musicians in Rainbow, so they wanted to make it a nice stopover for musicians going from Adelaide to Melbourne," Ms Rohrsheim said.

"There's a great music room inside it, a stage and a PA system."

Ms Rohrsheim has since left the project as the community achieved its goal of running the hub independently, but said she was still thrilled it made the finalist list.

"It's fabulous," she said. "It was a really special project for everyone, and they welcomed me into the community and so I kind of became family. It's really great they've got it up and running and it doesn't surprise me at all (that it's a finalist).

"There is a lot of passion in Rainbow and I think that's the way with a lot of small communities."

View the full list of finalists in each category here.

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