The M&G Green Spaces Awards received almost 100 entries, from Mumbai to Madrid, giving Charlotte and Hugo an opportunity to experience what it is like to be judges instead of being judged, as they normally would this week. Channelling the spirit of the RHS assessors was harder than it looks.
Here’s what Charlotte and Hugo said of the competition:
In a time when outdoors spaces of all shapes and sizes have been a lifeline for so many of us, we set the challenge of “A welcome place for people and wildlife” to the teams at M&G - and what an amazing response we had!
With nearly 100 entries, each with their own character and ideas, it was such a tough decision. After some animated debate between the two of us, we managed to select our winners.
In the indoor gardening ‘No Space’ category, we thought Manasi Malvankar in Mumbai had used so much ingenuity to enjoy 20 plants by some creative uses of window grills. It was lovely to see plenty of colour in the containers and plants providing what is obviously a much-loved, vibrant space.
Next up was ‘Small Space’ and it was a hard fought battle between Radha Mahadevan, Lucia Gibbard and Alexandra Ranson. Alexandra just edged it with her brilliantly creative use of a tight space in London, to create a stylish, light, plant-filled sun-trap full of pollinator goodies, such as Salvia, Borage and Cerinthe.
And finally, the ‘Big Space’ category, for which again it was tough to choose a winner. Of special note gardens by Judith Durno, Sian Ong and runner up Sophia Imeson, but our winner was Russ Grundy. Not only did it look like a lovely place to enjoy a gin and tonic at the end of the day, but it was a garden of many layers of pollinator-friendly planting. Russ has features such a bee hotel to be even more welcoming, and to be people-friendly is growing edibles for his neighbours.
After much debate, we decided that our ‘Best in Show’ winner was Russ Grundy. We loved the story of how he had used three months between jobs to convert his lawn into something that really was – in the true challenge of the brief – a welcome place for people and wildlife.
