Dorset Cereals, the award-winning breakfast cereal company, is thrilled to announce that its first ever garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008 has been presented with a GOLD medal and the award for Best Courtyard Garden. The courtyard garden, which is called Dorset Cereals Edible Playground, was designed by Dorset-based Nick Williams-Ellis and has been created to inspire schools across the UK to build their very own vegetable garden within their grounds.
“We are absolutely delighted to be presented with a Gold medal for our garden at Chelsea and to have won the award for Best Courtyard Garden – it really is an honour to have been able to be a part of this world-renowned event. Massive thanks go to designer Nick Williams-Ellis, the construction team at Marshall James and growers at The Gardens Group for their imagination, dedication and hard-work. We truly hope that our Edible Playground garden at Chelsea will help to show schools how their playgrounds can be turned into a growing vegetable and fruit garden, ultimately encouraging children to learn about food, where it comes from and how it should taste,” commented Patrick Horton from Dorset Cereals.
The Dorset Cereals Edible Playground garden is full of delightful edible plants offering colour, texture and taste for schools; from Bulls blood beetroot to Thornless blackberries, alpine strawberries and Corsican mint. The gnarled apple tree that gives shade to the children’s garden bench is thirty years old and has been lifted from a Dorset orchard not far from the home of Dorset Cereals in Poundbury, Dorchester.
The Edible Playgrounds’ project is a Dorset-born initiative that provides schools with gardening equipment, seeds, experience and information to help them establish a food-producing garden. The scheme was launched as a community project in May 2007 by Screen Bites: Dorset’s Food Film Festival with four primary schools. (www.screen-bites.co.uk) In 2008 Dorset Cereals will be directly supporting over 100 schools, helping them to put Edible Playgrounds into their grounds and they will be tracking progress over the next three years as the project develops. There is also a highly interactive website www.edibleplaygrounds.co.uk to give both grown-ups and children inspiring ideas to start their own Edible Playground.
For further information on Dorset Cereals please contact Patrick Horton on tel 01305 751000 or email patrick@dorsetcereals.co.uk
For further press information please contact Briony Gubbins at Positive PR on tel 01935 389497, fax 01935 389498 or email briony@positivepr.co.uk
Note to Editors:
Dorset Cereals sources only the finest quality ingredients from around the world, and is committed to making premium cereals. Each recipe is carefully blended and balanced and packed full of crisp flakes, crunchy nuts and soft succulent fruit. The blending process used by Dorset Cereals ensures that the ingredients remain whole, resulting in as little ‘dust’ as possible in the pack. Only natural ingredients are used in each of the cereals, which are approved by the Vegetarian Society and kosher. Last year saw the complete re-launch of the Company with new contemporary packaging, which reflects the uncompromising dedication the company has to making premium cereals.