A TEAM of green-fingered Winchester youngsters have taken part in a challenge at The Royal Horticultureal Society Gardens at Wisley.

The boys from Pilgrims’ Pre-Preparatory School, based in the Cathedral Close, entered the annual Budding Gardener’s Challenge.

The brief was to design, cultivate and plant out a small border using recycled materials and their entry, called “Castaway”, was designed to look like a pirate raft.

Flowers grown by the boys in their after-school gardening club filled the treasure chest - an old biscuit tin - and a broken sieve was planted with potatoes and parsley to accompany the fish dinner, a tuna prop discarded from a recent musical production.

Rigging was made from garden twine and the crow's nest sat on a runner bean pole mast.

The boys spent the morning at Wisley putting it all together and planting around the papier-mâché anchor with small white plants to look like barnacles.

Red geraniums were also planted to look like they were being fired from the cardboard canon. All of the 90 competition entries will be on display at RHS Wisley, just south of London, for the whole of June.