A MALVERN horticultural show was awash with autumnal golds recently as judges registered their approval of HMP Hewell, which was awarded ‘Best in Show’ for its edible garden.

Prisoners at HMP Hewell produced a show garden to illustrate both the negative and the positive aspects of life behind bars, and the real benefits of Restorative Justice Programmes by creating a productive vegetable plot for this year’s Malvern Autumn Show on September 25 and 26.

Entitled ‘Pathway to Progression’, the garden was designed to highlight the prisoner’s journey along the road to rehabilitation and showed how prison interventions are designed to help offenders resettle back into the community at the end of their sentence.

The garden was one of seven edible gardens on display to over 98,000 people at the Malvern show, in the event’s Good Life Pavilion and was being judged by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). The garden was awarded with the highest accolade at the event, a ‘Silver-Gilt Award’ and the ‘Best in Show’.

Alison Bramham-Smith, learning & skills manager at the prison, who is employed by The Manchester College, joined forces with HMP Hewell’s farms and gardens staff, led by Jane Cale and Amanda Smith, to create the garden, working together to involve prisoners and staff.

The garden consisted of a series of inter-linking rings which formed the basis of the garden’s design, and were inspired by the Restorative Justice Programme’s Venn diagram in which victim reparation, reconciliation and offender responsibility overlap.

A beehive served as a focal point and embodied the concept of community, while the garden’s natural hedgerow boundary, containing brambles to signify barbed wire, symbolized the prison’s perimeter fence.

Garden materials were reclaimed or regenerative where possible and at the rear of the garden there was a ‘prison’ gate, inscribed by art students, with the quote: “Every adversity, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”