Spotlight on the 2024 RHS Community Award winners

The group helps residents improve their health and mental wellbeing through learning skills to grow good produce and through social gardening. Meet, make, grow and share is their ethos.

“We were really humbled to have been nominated for this award, let alone win it,” says Bruce Newlands, Inverclyde Shed. “Working with our local communities is just something that’s in our ethos, we couldn’t imagine gardening without involving different groups including schools, churches and other neighbourhoods. We derive great satisfaction working with our community and passing on our knowledge to others, helping them to kick off their growing journey.”

The judging panel was impressed with Inverclyde Shed’s work with local primary and secondary schools and community groups, establishing more than 30 school gardens each with five fruit tree micro-orchards and planting an additional 20 orchards with the help of volunteers.

Volunteers, together with local businesses and the local authority, have also set up an Edible Trail of soft fruit and herbs from Gourock Rail Station into the town incorporating the Muirshiel Lane community garden. Businesses have also adopted herb barrels in front of their shops, which they maintain.

Amersham in Bloom is a trailblazing Britain in Bloom group. Young people of all ages, from toddlers to secondary school pupils and apprentices are embedded into what this community gardening group does, resulting in young people finding horticultural employment.

Gardening is a springboard for introducing young people to the wider aspects of caring for the environment. The forefront of the Bloom experience contains educational horticultural programmes for young people and environmentally themed competitions.

Stony Dean School for example has a long-standing partnership with Amersham in Bloom. Year 11 students carry out work experience every week. Some of the many activities have involved sowing sunflower seeds ready to be distributed to children as part of the tallest sunflower competition; weeding, digging and planting established and new beds around the town; selling bulbs and plants in the High Street; creating hanging baskets using peat-free compost and pollinator-friendly plants; and sowing a 200-metre-wide ribbon of wildflowers around their playing field.

​“We strive to engage with children and young people, forever coming up with new and different ways to nurture their environmental awareness and sense of stewardship, so to receive this award is a true honour,” says Steve Catanach, Amersham in Bloom. “We aim to be as inclusive as possible and create opportunities for all ages and abilities, with a particular effort to engage with teens and young adults in more recent years, as they are often excluded.”

The garden includes wheelchair-accessible paths, herbaceous borders, vegetable beds, a sensory garden, a small orchard with wildflowers, a picnic area, wildlife habitat, garden room, polytunnel and play area as well as a physic garden, containing a range of plants used over the centuries for medicinal purposes. It is run by volunteers, with the support of garden facilitators. Picnics, walks, workshops and a range of other activities and events take place throughout the year.

Ninewells Community Garden is a place for people of all ages. In school holidays children’s clubs promote active, healthy lives. ‘Seed to Fork’ bags provide families with recipes and ingredients to cook affordable, seasonally aware meals at home. Celebration events such as the RSPB Big Bird Watch and the Biodiversity Bash help raise awareness of the benefits of gardening.

“As the population ages and healthcare costs spiral, social prescribing and preventative healthcare are taking on renewed importance; Ninewells Community Garden is well placed to be proactive and play its part in helping individuals maintain good health,” says Mary Colvin, Trustee and founding member of the garden. “Winning this award raises expectations, attracts new volunteers, increases confidence in the charity and inspires our whole team to be trailblazers and continue to try innovative ways to tackle environmental issues and engage with our communities. This award is a tribute to our volunteers, supporters and funders.”

The area surrounding the practice at Dalston has at its core a wellbeing garden, a reflective space for clients, staff and the community. Perennial plants are grown and are chosen to give year-round colour, encourage pollinators and provide a winter food source and a natural pond has a thriving population of frogs.

Every year, children from the local primary school visit; together they plant trees, fruit bushes and pond and bog plants. This year the children grew sunflowers which were incorporated into the garden. They are also given a lesson on looking after nature and how to encourage wildlife to visit their own gardens.

Paragon’s Sustainability Plan, started in 2020, extends beyond horticulture. The group is passionate about minimising the waste it generates, reducing the energy and resources it uses, and advocating for others to reduce their own impacts. Paragon was the first veterinary practice to attain the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons - Environmental Sustainability Award, attaining an Outstanding result.

“We are thrilled to be the recipients of this new award,” says Laura Binnie, Vet and Sustainability Lead at Paragon Veterinary Group. “Staff wellbeing, being environmentally sustainable, protecting wildlife and enhancing our local biodiversity are all really important to us. We are so encouraged that this new category of award has been developed. Being sustainable is vital for the future of our planet - we all need to think about being less wasteful, more sustainable and do what we can to improve our biodiversity.”

“Everybody across Angus is absolutely thrilled that East Haven has won this award,” says Wendy Murray, East Haven Together. “It recognises all the work the community has carried out over many decades to protect the coastal landscape and wildlife habitats. Everything we do is community-led and this award highlights what people can achieve in even the smallest of communities.”

The group has worked closely with a range of partners to understand how to manage and maintain each area with the aim of protecting habitats and promoting biodiversity. BioBlitzs have been held and a total of 598 different species identified and recorded on national databases. Wild areas such as the sand dunes and wetland are carefully managed to protect coastal grasses and overwintering wetland birds. The Bloom group has been measuring the coastal dunes from fixed points for more than 30 years and involved schools with growing thousands of lyme and marram grasses from seed and then transplanting them to the dunes.

East Haven also works with Butterfly Conservation to conserve and protect the Small Blue butterfly. Volunteers have planted kidney vetch, its sole food plant, along several miles of the Angus coast every year since 2015. They are teaming up with young people in an outdoor classroom it created, with efforts focusing on environmental resilience.