Every year since 1964, towns across the UK have bloomed with hanging baskets and brightly coloured flowerbeds planted by residents. They wield their trowels in aid of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Britain in Bloom competition, a coveted accolade for the 1,600 communities that enter each year. Now, the charity is launching a new award for railway stations to honour the volunteers who keep platforms planted with cheerful flowers and pretty shrubs.
Five of the best have been shortlisted for the RHS Railway Stations in Bloom competition, marked for their beauty but also for how well they welcome wildlife and withstand changing climate conditions. The winner, announced this week, was the Cardross Community Organic Garden in Scotland. The RHS said: “The judges were especially impressed by how active the group was in including different members of the community in the station’s activities, from school children, Brownies to other volunteering and gardening groups”.
But all of the railway gardens are impressive. It has been an extremely hot and dry summer in Alresford, Essex, but the gardeners were prepared. Working hard to cut through asphalt to create flowerbeds, they have planted a “dry garden” inspired by the horticultural pioneer Beth Chatto, who died in 2018.
Also from Essex, she managed to grow plants in dry ground that had never been cultivated. Ten years ago the station was described in the local paper as “rundown”. Now, the planting beds rival any at Chelsea flower show.
Belgrave said residents were very pleased their station had received the spruce-up: “It’s wonderful. People sometimes stop by with plants and compost to help us, and we are very lucky to have some lovely volunteers as the garden requires constant maintenance. So we decided to seek advice and build a dry garden with drought-resistant plants.” At a windswept station on the west coast of Scotland, commuters may be surprised to find trees heaving with fruit and a thriving vegetable patch.
But Jane Connolly, who heads the Cardross station volunteer group, has found a way to create such bounty. We put up windproofing on the shore side to protect the plants but in general we have had very few failures.” Connolly and her fellow volunteers filled the station with plants from their own gardens and visit most days to tend to them. Having a pretty, flower-filled rail station rather than a neglected one makes a huge difference to the village, she said: “Every time we are down there, somebody will come along and peruse it and say how grateful they are with what we have done.
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