Myerscough gardens win Gold at Southport Flower Show

The prestigious annual event sees Myerscough bring to life the two winning entries in the annual Schools Design-a-Garden Competition.

The competition is for junior school pupils in years 3, 4, 5 and 6, with a bumper year of entries from across the region. The winners are Rosie Buckley from St Peters C of E Primary School and Matilda Roach from SS Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School. The competition received hundreds of entries from lots of budding gardeners and the designs were judged by a team of professionals.

The two winning designs have now been bought to life for the show under the direction of Myerscough College’s horticulture and landscape apprentices, and will be on display during the show and always receive a great deal of attention from the tens of thousands of visitors who attend every year.

Apprentices in Landscaping and Horticulture from across the region have been working with their Myerscough college tutors to bring these gardens to life. This gives them a chance to further develop their technical abilities, demonstrating knowledge, and fine-tuning industry behavioural competencies such as networking, building business links, and customer service skills.

This year the competition is kindly sponsored by HSBC Bank.

Rosie’s garden:

This garden represents what should be the playful aspects of today’s domestic outdoor spaces with bright colours, opportunities to play hopscotch, noughts and crosses and endless open play possibilities with space to bring toys outside.

There is a respect for nature with many colourful pollinator plants and homes for bugs hidden around. The water feature at the top of the garden is a safe bubbling addition to the garden where children can play without concern.

The water feature at the front of the garden is a haven for wildlife and aquatic plants and in a children’s, garden would also be protected with a safety mesh.

Matilda’s garden:

This garden considers the habitat of moths and butterflies, in particular the important caterpillar food and nectar for the adult butterfly and moth.

We see here a brownfield site that is teaming with wildlife where attempts have been made to tame areas with more decorative plants. Buddleia populates areas of the site loving the lime from the rubble and roadside favourites such as Verbascam thapsus and Urtica dioica (nettles!) sit alongside more traditional garden plants such as Echinacea Purpera and sunflowers and a magnificent Sorbus stands tall amongst the chaos of a disused site.

The planting amongst the sustainable building materials of hessian filled sandbags tells of resiliant plants such as ferns and the pond at the top of the garden is enhanced with moisture loving plants such as lythrum and hostas.

Talking of hostas we all know who loves a hosta – slugs! And who love slugs? Hedgehogs, consideration has been made to this sadly declining creature with a recycled hedgehog house and the area can be enjoyed with a seat made of recycled boards set into the banking at the top.

Lee Price, Myerscough College’s Employer Service Manager, remains ever impressed by the designs that are entered.

He said: “There is always a huge response to the competition every year and, as ever, the standard of entries was very high. The competition is a great for young people interested in gardening and I’ve been really impressed by the designs.’’

“A huge well done must go to the guys at Preston Paving and Landscaping who have really raised the bar with their fantastic work this year as well as our three learners who assisted them ably.’’

The Southport Flower Show runs until Sunday.