GREEN-FINGERED youngsters from Great Barrow Primary School got to mingle with royalty at the Chelsea Flower Show earlier this year.

Nine pupils visited the annual event in London where guests included HRH Prince Charles and Camilla and TV gardeners Alan Titchmarsh, thanks to the school’s involvement in a special gardening competition which saw them grow plants from the 1940s.

The school was one of 200 challenged by Miracle-Gro to grow plants good enough to be exhibited in the Grand Pavilion of the world’s most prestigious flower show alongside the plants of hundreds of professional exhibitors.

The plants included typical plants of the decade, such as beans, beets, potatoes and props like rosemary and thyme in tin pails and these were displayed at the flower show.

And last month Jane Hartley and John Clowes from Miracle-Gro paid a special visit to Great Barrow to present the pupils with a Silver Gilt medal certificate from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and to show the Green Team a filmed recording of the show.

Stephanie Heard from the school said: “Getting to see the Chelsea Flower Show for the first time is an experience we will never forget.

“The pupils were amazed so many visitors who wanted to know what they had grown and how they had been successful.”

The gardens showed how plants grow and the ways gardens have changed in the last 100 years.