More than 700 plants, trees and shrubs from the Best in Show garden at this year's RHS Malvern Spring Festival will be handed out to community groups, charities and parishes in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

BBOWT is giving hundreds of birch trees, fox gloves, strawberries and chives to organisations it works with so they can plant a little bit of RHS gold in their spaces to inspire people and help wildlife.

The Wildlife Trusts: Wilder Spaces garden won Best in Show, a gold medal, Best Construction Award and the prestigious People's Choice Award at Malvern this month, earning national acclaim and featuring on BBC Gardener's World.

BBOWT is also installing all the solid structures used in the garden at its popular College Lake nature reserve and visitor centre near Aylesbury, including a pavilion built from reclaimed steel joists and grating and topped with a living roof, and a bench made from ash wood removed from BBOWT nature reserves as part of the Trust’s ash dieback safety works. 

Katie Horgan from BBOWT, who is in charge of distributing the plants, said:"I think it would be hard to overstate what a difference these donations can make. We work with groups that don't have any funding, that sometimes struggle to create wild, green spaces in built-up areas, and can also struggle to inspire people to get involved with them: if they can say 'come down and help us plant these flowers which come from an RHS gold-award-winning garden that was on TV', that can make a huge difference!

"It's also hugely valuable that they come from BBOWT: we can guarantee these plants are good for wildlife and in good condition, but also just the fact that they are large, healthy and already flowering is a big help - that means that these groups can put these plants into an area where maybe they've been struggling a bit and it can make an instant difference: once you start to see bees, butterflies and other wildlife arriving, that can give you a real boost and help inspire people to keep doing the great work they're doing."

Katie took delivery of the plants last week at one of the organisations she works with for BBOWT - Lindengate near Wendover.

Lindengate, a nature-based health and wellbeing charity, will keep many of the trees and shrubs and offer service users the chance to plant them into its gardens as a therapeutic way to bond with nature and help wildlife at the same time.

Katie will also distribute hundreds more of the plants to other groups she works with:

• Chinnor Community Church, South Oxfordshire - chives, knapweed and red viper's bugloss to plant in new wildlife garden
• Little Missenden Parish Council - purple loosestrife, woodrush and meadowsweet to plant around Holmer Green village pond
• Wycombe Arts Centre in High Wycombe - tall herbaceous perennials for wildlife-friendly borders
• Aston Clinton Society - meadow plants like kidney vetch and knapweed to plant at the Rising Sun Meadow project next to the Rising Sun pub
• Knotty Green Allotments near High Wycombe - hawthorn and wild strawberries to improve the hedges and edges for wildlife
• Lindengate - birch trees and aquatics like water avens to go around ponds on site and herbs to go in new apothecary garden

Katie and colleagues in BBOWT Community Team hope to give more plants to urban groups the Trust works with in Reading and Slough as part of the Trust's Nextdoor Nature project

Jenny Morris, Lindengate volunteer co-ordinator, said: “Lindengate is a lifeline for so many people who are struggling with their mental health. We believe in the healing power of nature and understand its importance in helping to maintain our physical, mental and social wellbeing. This donation of plants and flowers will help us to continue to transform spaces on site, creating more diverse habitats for people and nature to enjoy.”

BBOWT helped design and create the award-winning Wilder Spaces garden with a host of partners including its own ecological consultancy Future Nature WTC, The Wildlife Trusts of which it is a member, Oxford Garden Design and garden designer Jamie Langlands. Charlie Luxton Design helped design the pavilion and materials used in the building of the garden were sponsored by waste company Grundon.

The award-winning space aimed to take wildlife gardening to a new level, demonstrating how wildlife habitats can be designed into the structure of a garden by using building waste, reclaimed material and untreated timbers.

The Wildlife Trusts believe gardening has a vital role to play in nature’s recovery, with long-term benefits for climate and people’s wellbeing too. The aim of the garden is to inspire visitors to think differently about the appearance of a garden designed for people and wildlife, and to show how we can all nurture nature - no matter what size or style of garden.

Distributing the plants used continues this legacy and will allow all the recipient groups to prove the same principles and help create more nature everywhere.