How does your garden grow?
How does your garden grow?
By Jenny Booth
Sunday Times best-selling author and gardens guru Huw Richards was at the Garden Museum in Lambeth to launch the GARDENA Top of the Plots competition – a UK-wide competition celebrating the best of ‘grow your own’ culture.
Entries are open to anyone with an allotment, a vegetable patch in the back garden, a community plot or even a thriving windowsill or patio garden where they grow delicious, homegrown produce.
“Now’s the moment to celebrate everything we love about growing — the hard work, the joy and the community spirit,” said head judge Huw, whose latest book The Permaculture Garden has just been published by Dorling Kindersley.
“If you’ve got a patch of green, big or small, this is your time to shine!”
Huw’s advice is not to worry about what the garden manuals say but to express your own personality through your growing — mix up flowers alongside your vegetables, choose the things that make you happy, and swap seedlings with your neighbours to boost the biodiversity in your garden.
Competition entries open this week/opened on 19 May as the growing season gets under way, and will remain open all summer. Categories include best allotment, best garden plot, best new plot, plus mini prizes for kids on the plot, best small plot, biodiversity on the plot and best community plot.
The overall champion will be crowned Plot of the Year, earning a top prize of £1,000 of GARDENA gardening products, and all the winners will also receive vouchers from the Royal Horticultural Society and DYFI Plants. Just email photos and descriptions of your plot, plus contact details, to topoftheplots@democracypr.com For more details visit the GARDENA website: https://www.gardena.com/uk/c/discover/gardening/magazine/top-of-the-plots
