Green fingers earn gold medals for students

Edinburgh-based students have flourished at this year’s Gardening Scotland event.

The students, from Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), won two pop-up gold awards, six pop-up silver awards, a bronze RAF award and a silver award for its show garden.

The aptly named Belinda Love was one of the Edinburgh-based students – alongside Kobus Sander, Ivonne Border and Kateryana Sydorova – behind the pop-up garden called Eat Play Love, which not only won a gold award, but also scooped the prize for Best Royal Highland Society Pop-Up Show Garden.

The theme of Eat Play Love was designed to encourage gardeners to grow vegetables, have fun, and ‘to welcome and cherish all forms of life.’

Belinda said: ‘I hope visitors to our garden take even one little idea home with them to try, like crafting a wee garden game out of some recycled materials, trying an edible flower recipe like frozen ice pops, or fashioning an old broken garden pot into a hedgehog shelter.’

A Scottish Landscape Garden, a pop-up garden created by SRUC students Caitlin Nairn and Rianne Nairn, received a gold award, as well as the best plant practice award.

The Show Garden, receiving a silver award, was entitled Wee Natural Gallery. This garden was intended to inspire a realisation of the natural world and encourage young people to learn how to connect with nature.

Other pop-up gardens winning silver awards were: Fiaba, The Hort Tea, Bees and Beasties, and Bric-a-Brac Balcony Beach Garden.

Three students, in co-operation with Cupar Community Council, received a Bronze Award for their RAF centenary floral garden, and Oatridge students gained gold awards for their pallet gardens.

Hannah D’Mellow SRUC marketing and student recruitment manager, said: ‘Gardening Scotland is the biggest gardening show in Scotland and an annual event which SRUC looks forward to very much. We can really showcase the range and depth of our students’ knowledge and skills here.

‘I’m absolutely delighted for all those who have put their time and effort into projects this year. The results are amazing.’

The Horticulture, Landscape and Garden Design Programmes at SRUC offer courses ranging from community programmes to National Certificates and Honours Degrees. The Elmwood and Oatridge campuses offer Horticulture courses, while the Barony campus offers courses in forestry and the Edinburgh campus and SRUC at Glasgow Botanic Gardens offer courses in both Horticulture and Garden Design.

 

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