My job as an RHS Ambassador is to inspire children to go outdoors and have fun gardening, so I’ve asked family, friends and people I’ve met through the RHS if they would like to write a Guest Post on my blog.

Introducing Sean Murray, winner of the Great Chelsea Garden Challenge 2015. I had the pleasure of meeting Sean at Chelsea Flower Show in 2015, where he had a show garden on Main Avenue. Sean’s garden was my favourite, so I gave him my ‘George Awards Gold’, which was filmed by the BBC.

Sean loves anchovies, breeds Mediterranean tortoises and dreams of living in Corfu !

I love being in the garden as it’s a great way of keeping fit and being outdoors, it’s a good way to take your mind off things if you are worried about anything and need to relax. Being in the garden allows you to just enjoy the moment and take in the sights, sounds and smells of nature. It’s amazing to grow your own food from  a tiny handful of seed, being able to pick a bunch of flowers from seed you have sown just ten weeks before is a great way of seeing quick results and keeping you interested in gardening. I am growing some nectar rich meadow flowers from a packet of seed from Chiltern seeds this year at my allotment and this should be great for increasing the types of insects I can identify in my allotment. It’s only going to be two square meters big but I can’t wait to see how it grows.

(Here’s me and George with gardening royalty Alan Titchmarsh and florist, Simon Lycett as we nervously awaited the arrival of The Queen)

Nervously waiting for the Queen to arrive

As the days are getting longer and winter turns to spring, the house sparrows are making lots of noise as they clean out the sparrow nest box I put up only last year and replace it with fresh nesting material. Sparrows are sociable birds and like to nest in colonies, like a little community all of their own. They are my favourite. A great project would be to put up a bird nest box or even make one and see how long it takes to have a family make it their home. Place it somewhere sheltered on a wall or tree.

You could also make an insect hotel by asking an adult to cut up some garden canes in to short lengths and fill an empty baked bean or soup tin with them. Attach this about 1 meter from the ground again somewhere sheltered and see how long it takes solitary bees to start living in there; a great cheap easy way to encourage wildlife in to your garden.

Recycled materials

Recycled materials

Recycled materials

I am dividing my snowdrops soon when they have stopped flowering and still have green leaves, this will mean I can have an even bigger patch of them next year under my trees and shrubs, all for free!

Thanks Sean for your blog I thought it was great, especially all the stuff about wildlife. I loved your Chelsea Flower Show Garden as it tied in with something that is important to me – instead of using tarmac on a front garden/drive Sean used plants to encourage wildlife. It was just brilliant !

Check out Sean’s website Garden Narratives or his Facebook page