To cultivate a healthy attitude towards wildlife

Entries for Cultivation Street 2018 close tomorrow – so get yours in quickly for a chance to share the £20,500 of prizes.

Carol Watson is a sales assistant at Notcutts garden centre in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where she gives talks, leads workshops and helps community groups and schools with their projects.

The mum-of-two, who entered our garden centre ambassador category, loves watching visitors to her garden birdfeeder. She tells me: “I love to educate people on not killing wildlife.

“So many don’t realise the weed killer they put down affects bees and slugs, and then the birds if they eat the slugs. So it’s about a better alternative.”

Carol, 51, who has three allotments, added: “Cuttings are a great free or low-cost way to plant. And propagating works well as a workshop event.”

Carol has also been helping teen gardeners at nearby Oakley School. She said: “We provided seeds and plants, but mostly taking cuttings from their own. They were a remarkable class.”

We’ll be revealing our 2018 winners and runners-up in these pages from September 2, so make sure you pick up your Sunday Mirror.

Follow Cultivation Street on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. See cultivationstreet.com for full details. existence. Yet bees are now in big trouble. In recent winters, we’ve lost as much as half of the bee population in some areas of Europe.

The good news is that this is an area in which gardeners can have a truly incredible impact.

Planting flowers that provide nectar and pollen for bees throughout the season is a brilliant way to support them and help bolster their numbers.

Good plants to achieve this include globe thistles, lavender, buddleia and wallflowers. Foxgloves, too, are a big hit with bees.

And if you have herbs in your garden such as chives, thyme, oregano and sage, an effort-free way to feed the bees is by letting some of the stems flower.

For more about bees and how you can help them, listen to my Grasping the Nettle podcast on YouTube.

For more info and tickets, visit southportflowershow.co.uk.