PUPILS from two Wye Valley primary schools received top honours at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival last week for a garden designed and created to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen as “a woman that can”.

Children from St Briavels and Redbrook Primary Schools are beaming with pride after their Royal-inspired garden was given a ‘Highly Commended’ award in the RHS’s School Garden Challenge 2022 at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern last Friday (May 6).

The theme for this year’s competition was a ‘Celebration of the Queen’, with Her Majesty marking 70 years of the throne with her Platinum Jubillee this year.

To create their entry, which was the school’s fourth in the competition, the children up-cycled a soapbox derby go cart and turned it into the Queen’s Land Rover, which she famously drives at her Sandringham Estate in Norfolk and on holiday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and planted it out with a range of spring flowers.

And, inspired by Her Majesty’s time spent working as a mechanic during World War Two, the pupils came up with the idea of adding in the Queen’s legs - complete with a kilt and diamond-encrusted shoes - to the underside of the Landy to demonstrate her “this girl can” attitude.

Proud parent Becky Kendrick described the award win as a “fantastic achievement considering the pandemic and severe lack of school funds.”

But the pupils, staff and parents were disappointed that, despite receiving the ‘Highly Commended’ award from the judges, the children were told to remove the legs prior to a visit to the festival from HRH Princess Anne, as a royal inspector felt it could cause offence to the Royal Family.

Beccy said it was “a real shame” that the design was deemed inappropriate, given the children were trying to demonstrate the Queen’s can-do attitude and celebrate her as an example of gender equality in doing her own Landy maintenance.

The pupils came up with the idea for the design after being “thoroughly inspired” to learn the Queen had trained and served as a mechanic during the war along with her love for the Land Rover, with Her Majesty having owned around 30 vehicles made by the British company over the course of her 70-year reign.

Every single child in both schools had a part to play in the development of the garden, including the design, flower planting, and the creation of the Queen’s legs and other decorations, like her papier-mâché Corgi, flower pot tea cups and pipe cleaner crown.

The children also wanted their design to highlight the Queen’s willingness to combine practical life skills with running the Commonwealth, so they depicted every member in their garden using tin cans, grass heads and mini flags.

The school was given a £250 grant by the RHS to contribute to the costs of the garden, and design, construction and planting workshops were also held to help participating schools.

Becky said the children were “very proud” of their design ideas which were lauded by the judges, who enjoyed asking the pupils what the Queen was up to under her Land Rover chassis.

She added of the inspector’s request to remove the legs: “Perhaps this is a good lesson in what is deemed inappropriate for them, and if not, perhaps a slight lesson in anarchy.”