GREEN-FINGERED prisoners and staff from Leyhill Prison are on the glory trail again with their entry for this year's Chelsea Flower Show.

A small group travelled to the show site this week at the start of a frantic period of preparation which will not end until the prestigious four-day show opens on May 25.

Last year the prison once again won gold with a garden called No Time to Stand and Stare - taking its cue from the much loved poem Leisure by WH Davies.

This year's Chelsea entry is called Hope and has been designed to reflect the feeling that even in these times of aggression and conflict, there is still hope for a better future.

Prison spokesman Michelle Peglar-Richards said: "The garden shows that whether in times of war or industrial pollution, in the end nature fights back and inevitably wins.

"The garden reflects this with a war-torn cottage as the centrepiece surrounded by the debris of destruction. Wild flowers are fighting back and the vegetables and salads have gone to seed, providing the hope of a new crop the following year."

A water feature has been created from a bomb crater, with water pouring from a fractured toilet cistern pipe. Part of the garden is unscathed, being away from the blast, but dead trees behind the cottage provides a reminder of destruction.

The natural beauty of the planting is emphasised by the sparse reality of the hard landscaping.

Work on producing the plants for the garden got underway at Leyhill's extensive glasshouses almost a year ago and the last few months have seen furious activity as officers and inmates race to have plants and shrubs ready for the big occasion.

Leyhill governor Richard Booty said: "Not many people think of prisons as places of inspiration. What participation in the Chelsea Flow Show does for Leyhill and the Prison Service in general is to demonstrate that inspiration is possible in prison.

"This year's garden is about contemplation taking time to think. This is inevitably what prisoners have time to do, contemplating on their paths taken so far"

He said the prisoners involved with the garden had not only learnt new horticultural skills but had also built self confidence by working as a team, meeting members of the public and achieving goals.

"Leyhill's sole focus is to improve the number of successful resettlements of prisoners back into the community," said Mr Booty. "We acknowledge that this can be done in a number of ways and we are continually looking at different ways of achieving this. In that sense we are like a quality garden: continually changing, always developing and always seeking to improve".

South West Prisons area manager Jerry Petherick said he was delighted to see Leyhill at Chelsea again.

"Each year I'm both impressed and inspired by the quality, hard work and imagination that goes into displaying successfully at Chelsea," he said. "By taking part in the show prisoners learn professional horticultural skills of the highest level, have the opportunity to meet members of the public and, I think crucially, are spoken to not as prisoners but as experts in their particular discipline."