IT’S the oldest pun in the book, but these young gardeners really are growing more and more successful every day.

After making the finals of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) School Gardening Team of the Year 2017, the gardening club at Stanford in the Vale CofE Primary School were crowned gold medallists in a second cultivation contest.

The young green shoots won first place in a garden design competition run by Bicester-based garden tools manufacturer Wilkinson Sword.

As a reward, staff from the firm this week visited the school to present them with their prize: a hamper full of handy gardening tools.

The competition, which opened in September, challenged primary schools across Oxfordshire to design their ideal fruit and vegetable garden for their school.

Hundreds of youngsters submitted their painstakingly-planned plots but in the end their could be only one winner.

Oxford Mail:

Stanford's winning Wilkinson Sword garden design.

Wilkinson Sword spokeswoman Fay Wilkinson said: “We had no idea how popular this would be, or quite how high the quality of applicants would be.

“But the judges were so impressed with the standard of design that the Stanford in the Vale children came up with, choosing them as the winner was an easy decision.

“They impressed all of the judges with their imaginative and competent design.”

The children will also get a fruit-growing masterclass from RHS Young Gardener of the Year 2012, Lucas Hatch.

In another RHS link, the Stanford gardening club also this summer made it to the final three of the RHS School Gardening Team of the Year, but were this week pipped to the post by a school from Hammersmith.

Even so, they still get £250 of garden centre vouchers, a specially-engraved trowel and a set of gardening gloves just for reaching the final.