PUPILS at St David's Centre in Hereford have won the approval of top television garden designer, Diarmuid Gavin, with their garden plans at their new school next to the ruins of Herefordshire's Blackfriars Friary.

The Year 10 students' design - Ancient and Modern Garden - won first prize in the Three Counties Agricultural Society's prestigious Design A Garden competition which has Diarmuid as patron.

The judging panel, made up of Diarmuid, Bob Sweet, show development head for the Royal Horticultural Society, and Sharon Gilbert, of TCAS, was unanimous in its choice of first prizewinner.

Diarmuid said: "The overall standard was extremely good, with lots of inventive and colourful work. I am impressed by the students' enthusiasm, too. The St David's design is quite clearly a communal effort. It is well researched and considered, and I like the way it has been designed, as one aspect of a co-ordinated garden, which will also include an orchard and a shade garden."

The aim of the Design A Garden competition is to encourage students to learn about horticulture through the practical process of creating, planning and building a garden.

On the move

Guided by teacher Erica Pinney, they have devoted almost a term's worth of environmental studies lessons to the project, in a bid to secure sponsorship of £7,500 and the opportunity to show off their work to some 80,000 visitors at last weekend's Spring Gardening Show, Malvern.

Chelsea Flower Show medallist, Chris Caligari, co-ordinated preparations for the garden at the showground and npower funding will ensure that it is transported to its permanent home at the new St David's Centre. St David's is moving premises in September, and the new garden will be on an ancient site adjacent to the 14th century Friary.

The section entered for the competition has a sundial as its central focus, and the pupils used the internet for their research.

They also enlisted the help of schools' maths adviser Brian Sharpe who showed them how to plot the position of the hour stones and the date scale, and they sought the advice of garden designer, Mandy Davis, in drawing up the plans.

The design features four flower beds, each representing a season, and a seating area with a curved bench, surrounded by scented herbs such as lavender, lemon balm, chamomile and thymes. Materials used include concrete, slate, pebbles, pottery, clay, recycled glass and mosaic tiles.

l Fairfield High School, guided by teacher Kathy Francis, won second (Amy Custance and Angelina Haseldine) and third (Terri Foulston) prizes of £1000 and £500 respectively.