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Follow the construction of the Secured by Design garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show

You can follow the construction of the Secured by Design crime prevention garden as it is being built in preparation for the Royal Hampton Court Flower Show on twitter at @capelmanor

The garden, a partnership between Secured by Design, Capel Manor College and The Metropolitan Police, will incorporate proven techniques to deter opportunistic burglars, and will feature at the Royal Horticultural Society’s prestigious annual show, which runs from 2-8 July 2018.

Two mature students at Capel Manor College’s School of Garden Design and Plantsmanship in Enfield won the opportunity to design and build the crime prevention garden in a competition sponsored by Secured by Design (SBD), the national police crime prevention initiative.

The students were given four weeks to prepare to present their city or urban garden, which could be for a front or rear garden, or both, to ‘provide an enjoyable and safe space, which has well protected boundaries, preventing easy access to the rear and protects everything within’.

Students Lucy Glover and Jacqueline Poll were declared joint winners and are now working together on their garden for the show. The elements they included to make the garden safe, secure and sustainable included fencing topped with trellis to provide a high boundary; prickly plants, such as pyracantha or climbing roses, to protect windows, fencing and drainpipes; and fixed concrete benches topped with wood panels so they couldn’t be repositioned to access windows.

They also featured dawn-to-dusk low voltage lighting; solar globe lights in sandstone finish to provide low level illumination at night as well as sculptural interest to borders; and a pergola with a roof made of round poles with lose fitting wrap-around metal tubes to discourage climbing.

Other measures included gravel paths to hear the crunch of approaching footsteps; and a secure shed, topped with a green planting roof, with items inside like bicycles and gardening tools marked with DNA forensic marking liquids to identify them if stolen.

Secured by Design
Our aim is to achieve sustainable reductions in crime through design and other approaches to enable people to live in a safer society.
Tel: 0203 8623 999
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Video: https://youtu.be/jZ7oeAQcHmc