The project wouldn’t exist without the brilliant support from the National Lottery Players and they also did some brilliant pledges!

Winner: Benjamin Gibbs in Marwood

Benjamin has left a section of their lawn and border to grow wild all year which contains many wildflowers and meadow plants for the bees. They also created two bug hotel from waste timber and garden scraps. Benjamin "I’m aiming for much more planting diversity with more bee-friendly flowers this year, and I’ve been working with my landlords and neighbours to further develop the space for wildlife."

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Two other highly commended lottery player award winners were:

Trudi in Barnstaple

Trudi has made her small garden into a wildlife haven by making 6 different pledges for nature including a bird box, a wildlife pond and a planting a small hedge.

Trudi wrote: "This is our first summer working on creating the back garden, since we moved into the house in late 2018, when it was just a dumping ground for all sorts of rubbish, we spent summer 2019 clearing as much of it as possible and keeping the bits we believed we could reuse in the garden.

In 2019 we started small, creating a small floral garden in the front, planted a native tree in a pot and just tried to encourage grass and flowers in the back garden.

We have been delighted at the progress we made in 2020, despite working throughout lockdown, and we still have plans for this spring for making a bug hotel and a stumpery or pile of old logs near our pond, to continue growing as many flowers from seeds as possible, working to create a safe composting space and hopefully planting some more native trees. I would love to encourage hedgehogs as I see them out the front of the house, but not yet in the back garden. 

It is a challenge for me to create a small garden which does as much as possible to encourage the natural world in all of its forms to visit, looks attractive on the eye, offers a space for the humans and our pets to enjoy and spend as much time as possible in, allows us to enjoy the wonderful view we have from the end of the garden, but is functional in allowing me to dry washing or grow food, but I will keep working on it as it gives me such joy.

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Michelle in Barnstaple

Has planted bee friendly shrubs to help garden for insects. "I have to be careful of what I grow in the garden due to my hens and ducks free-ranging, and also the cats so my pledge was to try and make it bee and butterfly friendly.   I obviously cannot use any pesticides or herbicides because of the incumbent critters,but they are very good at slug and snail control."

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