David Bellamy congratulates Londoners who make the city 'a pleasanter, healthier, less stressful place to be' » Environment » 24dash.com

Celebrity botanist David Bellamy congratulated green-fingered Londoners at an awards ceremony in Covent Garden on Monday.

The London landmark played host to London's Green Corners Awards 2008 with winners including a recovered railroad site, a fish and chip shop and a prison.

The awards celebrate all areas of London that make the capital a brighter, greener and healthier place to live, with entries ranging from whole streets to imaginatively planted window boxes.

Mr Bellamy is the president of the Conservation Foundation, the environmental group that organised the ceremony. He was also on the judging panel, which included Gary Marcuccilli, managing director of Covent Garden London, Alexander Nicoll, corporate responsibility director at Liberty International, author and Evening Standard journalist, Pattie Barron, Horticulture Week deputy editor Matthew Appleby and The Conservation Foundation director David Shreeve.

Mr Bellamy said: "Green Corners recognises the individual Londoners who are making their corner of London a pleasanter, healthier, less stressful place to be.

"When these Green Corners are added together they begin to contribute to a growing green lung for Londoners and biodiversity for London's wildlife - especially our bee population that needs all the help we can give it.

"Every person today who has won a Green Corner award made a garden for the love of it and in return we want to say thank you to them for making green pockets of pleasure ."

The awards' largest category was the Community Green Corners, which was won by a garage site on Sherland Road in Twickenham. Four ornamental trees were planted at the request of the site's residents in 1992. It is entirely funded and maintained by residents, who believe in the importance of encouraging biodiversity.

Islington Gardeners' Forgotten Corners scooped a special award for its collection of formerly neglected patches of land beside the pavements of Islington.

Susan Lees, who nominated the gardens and tends Whitehall Park Garden herself, said: "We have discovered forgotten corner gardening to be a much harder task than gardening in our own back gardens but so rewarding when something good happens - a passer-by admires it - or a new plant flourishes."

Camley Street Natural Park, near King's Cross railway station, picked up a Blooming Fantastic award for its two acres of recovered railroad, which has been turned into a natural park.

Its nominators, Erin Murphy and Kara Kock, said: "Places like Camley Street are few and far between, especially in our bustling city. This unique space gives people from across communities solace from the usual motion of a city and helps them reconnect with nature and rekindle the innate relationship we have with it."

Olley's Fish Experience fish and chip shop in Herne Hill, South London, won a Commercial Green Corners award for the display of plants along its roof, which attracts admiring glances from passing drivers and regularly pulls in crowds.

HMP Wandsworth won a Public Green Corners award for its abundance of flowers and plants, which have transformed the prison.

The winning projects received garden centre vouchers and an engraved Green Corners trowel from David Bellamy.

The Conservation Foundation was founded by David Bellamy and David Shreeve to promote positive environmental awareness and action.

For a full list of winners and more information on the awards visit www.conservationfoundation.co.uk.