A garden which champions biodiversity and created by experts from Oxford has won an award at RHS Malvern’s spring festival.
The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity and this year the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust worked together to submit a ‘garden’ for their annual spring festival competition.
The show garden they submitted to judges was named ‘The Wildlife Trusts: Wilder Spaces’ and this garden was awarded a gold medal and praised by judges for its atmosphere, flair and impact.
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Future Nature WTC, the Wildlife Trust’s ecological consultancy, also contributed to the garden submission and experts from Oxford Garden Design also lent their efforts towards the project.
The Wilder Spaces garden aimed to show that wildlife habitats can be designed into the structure of a garden, using building waste, reclaimed material and untreated timbers.
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Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust’s chief executive, Estelle Bailey, said she was “absolutely thrilled the Wilder Spaces garden had been so highly commended by the Royal Horticultural Society”.
She explained: “The festival gives us a great opportunity to showcase to people what they can achieve in their own gardens for nature, for climate and for themselves."
Ms Bailey said nature was “in crisis” and not enough was being done to “reverse this terrible decline”.
She added: “We want to see 30 per cent of land well managed for nature by 2030 and our gardens are a vital part of that wild jigsaw to help bring nature back.
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“Private gardens make up a bigger area than all of Britain’s nature reserves combined.
"They can provide a mosaic of mini-habitats that support a diverse range of species, so they are key to helping create more nature everywhere.”
Once the RHS Malvern Spring Festival is over the garden will be distributed across various Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust sites and projects, including those working with schools and community projects.
Sheena Marsh, owner and founder of Oxford Garden Design, which built the garden, said: “We are delighted to be working with Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust on The Wilder Spaces Garden, bringing together our learnings with Jamie’s creativity.
“We hope that this garden will inspire home owners to create wilder spaces in their own gardens.”
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The seating in the garden will go to the Wildlife Trust’s College Lake Visitor Centre, near Tring and Lindengate and a nature health and wellbeing charity in Wendover will also receive some of the planting.
The RHS Malvern Spring Festival runs from May 11 to May 14 at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern, Worcestershire.
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