FOUR schoolgirls making their debut at the Chelsea Flower Show are the youngest designers of a main garden.

The four had a preview of their creation yesterday as construction work was completed in time for judging today, when the show opens. They are tipped to win a prized Royal Horticultural Society medal.

Zoe Harrison, Alex Hosking and twins Siân and Kamala Johal are Year 9 pupils at Burntwood School for Girls in Wandsworth, South London. They and 40 Year 7 pupils took part in a national competition organised by Daihatsu cars to design a biodiversity garden and beat 150 other schools to win.

The four girls, who are all 13, took the ideas provided by the younger children and worked them into a design that forms one of Chelsea’s top displays.

They have included a sculpture made from old car exhaust pipes, which double up as bird-feeders. Water flows from the feature when two bicycles are pedalled. Other key elements include a “bug hotel”, made from old logs, “bee apartments” in a specially adapted wall made from recycled bricks, and a bat house which was inspired by an ancient icehouse in their school’s grounds.

Kamala Johal said of the project: “We wanted to make it a sustainable garden so we are reusing things such as bottle tops and exhaust pipes.”

She has found that the research required to plan the project has changed her view of gardens. “I didn’t know much about flowers and plants before this. Now I’ve learnt about the flowers that attract wildlife and which colours go together. I even help my Mum out in the garden now — though Mum still does the hard work.”

Siân, older than her twin by five minutes, hopes the design will help householders, especially those in cities, to understand the value of back gardens to wildlife.

“People don’t really understand about how much we need to care for the environment. I hope we can influence them. We need to create habitats for wildlife.”

Eleanor Smith, a geography and citizenship teacher at the girls’ school, was impressed by the quality of all 44 children’s work and their enthusiasm.

The project was worked into the school curriculum as part of coursework on the issues of sustainability and worked so successfully that it will be included next year whether or not there is a competition.

She said: “The whole school is excited by this. All my colleagues are hoping they can sneak off at some point to see the garden at Chelsea.”

Tim Barfoot, of Daihatsu, said the garden’s £50,000 budget, one of the smallest at Chelsea, was kept down to make it possible for other gardeners to re-create the ideas. He said that Daihatsu chose to make biodiversity the theme to complement its environmentally friendly approach to cars.

Mr Barfoot added: “Children this young aren’t supposed to come into Chelsea on the Sunday while building work is still going on. We had to do some nifty negotiating with the RHS to get them in to see what they had created.”

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