Events
ADCOTE ENTRY JUDGED BLOOMING MARVELLOUS BY TOP TV GARDENER
"Room for Growth", Adcote School for Girls' debut in the garden design competition at this year's Shrewsbury Flower Show caught the attention of TV gardener Chris Beardshaw. In fact the popular television presenter, who was one of the judges for the event, was so impressed that he has offered to help the girls with future entries beginning with the Malvern RHS Show.
Louise Hudson, the teacher responsible for organising and co-ordinating Adcote's entry told us "We had to submit our initial idea in April and decided to create a garden that would reflect the different stages of childhood and illustrate the similarity between nurturing plants and children. Because in the same way that plants require different levels of care and attention as they grow - so do the children at our school."
"A total of twelve girls were involved at every stage of the project enabling them to learn about garden design, planning and planting - as well as the importance of team work. In spite of the school holidays eight of the girls came along to build the garden during the preceding week and took it in turns to man the stand during the show."
"The plants we used - from the area around the sand pit at the entrance for the youngest children, through the juniors' lawned playing area to the more mature shrubs and trees for the senior students - were specially chosen to depict the differences in age, outlook and growth."
"Chris Beardshaw said that he loved the story of the garden and had crouched down during the judging so that he could imagine how the design would look through the eyes of a small child. He also liked our planting schemes and the simplicity of restricting the palette to the school's colours of blue yellow and green."
Head Debbie Hammond said, "The garden certainly attracted a lot of attention from visitors to the show and an interview with one of our pupils was featured on Central News The school's Garden Club is relatively new. We were obviously delighted by Chris' comments and looking forward to taking him up on his offer to help with the design and overall execution of our next entry."
Louise added "It was undoubtedly a brilliant but tiring experience that involved a great deal of time, effort and commitment from the girls, parents and staff. But we're already looking forward to working with Chris on our next design for Malvern and will definitely be back at Shrewsbury Flower Show to mark Adcote's centenary celebrations in 2007."
[Picture caption: Pictured with TV gardening expert Chris Beardshaw are some of Adcote's garden design team with Debbie Hammond (Head) and Louise Hudson.]