Children's Society wins Gold Award at Chelsea » Environment » 24dash.com

A charity has picked up a gold award today at the Chelsea Flower Show for its garden that highlights the importance of green spaces for children.

The Children's Society display, launched by the Wombles and TV presenter Melinda Messenger, presented a future city garden, where families can spend time together and learn about the environment.

It includes vertical bicycle storage, water harvesting facilities as well as waste and recycling storage. The plants are self-seeding and selected to attract bees, birds and butterflies and the use of gravel provides drainage to reduce the risk of flooding.

The garden's designer, Mark Gregory, confessed to playing Led Zeppelin to his plants in the "living walls" display to ensure they were in tip-top shape for show.

He said: "It's fantastic to win gold for the Children's Society with a design that proves you can have a practical, usable space and be environmentally responsible. To celebrate I'm going to treat my 'living walls' to Spandau Ballet's Gold."

Richard Johnson, from The Children's Society, added: "It's obvious Mark's green fingers have the winning formula - we're now calling him Gold Finger. Thanks to Mark and his team for designing us a visionary space for childhood."

Bernard Cribbins, actor and narrator from the Wombles TV series from 1973, said he was pleased the show had inspired the garden.

"I always had great pleasure narrating the Wombles but behind the fun was a serious message about 'making good use of the things that we find'. I'm glad to see The Children Society are making good use of our spaces to help make childhood better," he said.