A GREEN-fingered Brooklands resident has won a new competition for entrants aged 28 and under, at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Tatton Park Garden Show.

Katie Maude, 27, a landscape architect with Urban Green, Manchester, won the young planting designer 2016 competition with a gold award.

She was helped by landscape contractor Matthew Beesley from Cheshire although another entrant won the Young Landscape Contractor 2016 award.

Former Altrincham Grammar School pupil Katie said: “When I heard I had won, I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t often get a chance to design something on this scale in landscape architecture. This garden is domestic sized whereas in landscape you are working on housing estates on a much larger scale.”

Their garden, Urban Retreat, had to be in the shade and Katie sourced plants such as hosters, ferns and rhododendrons to create a peaceful woodland oasis in the city with a water feature.

Urban Retreat competed against two other gardens – Coastal Retreat and Countryside Retreat, to win the top award.

Katie said: “I have never done a competition like this before although, when I was a kid, I won a prize for designing a garden for the children’s ward at Wythenshawe Hospital.”

Urban Retreat was featured on BBC 2’s programme, RHS Tatton Flower Shows 2016 on Thursday night, July 21.

Katie takes home an inscribed crystal vase and a gold medal certificate.