The Butterfly Garden in Cheltenham has been chosen as winner of this year’s Gardening Against The Odds Awards, the fourth to be organised by The Conservation Foundation, in association with The Sunday Telegraph.

Set up in 2002 by Chris Evans, the Butterfly Garden offers a safe haven for those “looking to escape the world and those looking to re-enter it”. Up to 30 students a day of various ages and disablements benefit from gardening therapy and other activities at the charity which is located by Dundry Nurseries, Chris’s family owned garden centre. He was nominated by David Simpson Cheltenham Horticultural Society Publicity Officer.

A prison and a London area with a troubled past are joint runners-up. HMP Parc in Bridgend, Wales has a wildflower meadow and extensive fruit and vegetable beds within its walls. Inmates tend these, gaining new skills and qualifications, which offer job opportunities after release. An impressive vegetable garden set up in Tottenham’s  Broadwater Farm Estate by Martin Burrows and Robbie Samuda of the Back2Earth project welcomes local residents to make productive use of their environment. Workshops teach gardening skills and a vibrant community spirit prevails.

"The judges have been both impressed and moved by the stories of this year's Gardening Against the Odds winners and runners up, says Anne Cuthbertson, editor of Sunday Telegraph Life.

"The Butterfly Garden run by Chris Evans exemplifies a generous spirit and enterprise that gives hope and encouragement to the vulnerable and disabled,” she continues, “ I hope Butterfly gardens spread their wings to other parts of the country.

"HMP Parc is another fine example of the confidence gardening can generate in those who have fallen out of society and are looking to make a fresh start. Finally, Broadwater Farm impressed us with the progress it has made in rebuilding a community shattered by a violent past. Urban regeneration where it is needed most."

A new award honouring young gardeners is shared between 22 year old Ricky Downey Hollamby and DOST (which means ‘friend’ in several languages. Ricky is an apprentice gardener in West Ham Park whose life turned around through gardening. The young people who belong to DOST arrived in Britain either as refugees or migrants and have created a garden in a neglected site in Newham.

The awards, which are dedicated to the late Sunday Telegraph gardening writer Elspeth Thompson, celebrate those who garden in the face of physical, mental, social and environmental ‘odds’. Among the celebrated gardeners and conservationists making up the judging panel are the Duchess of Northumberland, naturalist and Conservation Foundation president David Bellamy, actress Susan Hampshire and guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds.

Says Conservation Foundation Director David Shreeve, “The Conservation Foundation encourages positive environmental action and these projects show how people all over the country are using gardening to overcome a variety of odds to improve their lives and help others”.

Five other individual and groups were given Highly Commended Awards. The Horticultural Therapy Trust offers two calm gardening spaces to those with mental health problems in Devon and Cornwall. Erica Quinn’s garden in front of her Glasgow tenement has helped her through bipolar disorder and post natal depression; the charity Gardening Leave has opened its first outreach project for traumatised ex-service veterans in the shadow of HMP Wormwood Scrubs; The Forget-Me-Not-Young-Gardeners and their families find a peaceful place where disability is accepted and supported in The Alnwick Garden and Living Medicine is showing people in the London Borough of Newham how to use plants and food for many everyday health problems.

Winners and their nominators will be invited to a special Gala event at Syon House, London home of the Duchess of Northumberland, next April to receive their awards.

More information at www.conservationfoundation.co.uk

OVERALL WINNER: Chris Evans, the Butterfly Garden, Cheltenham.

JOINT RUNNERS-UP: HMP Parc, Bridgend; Martin Burrows and Robbie Samuda, Back2Earth, Broadwater Farm, London

YOUNG GARDENERS: DOST, Newham, London; Ricky Downey Hollamby, Stoke Newington, London

HIGHLY COMMENDED: The Horticultural Therapy Trust, Cornwall and Devon; Erica Quinn, Glasgow; Gardening Leave, London; Forget-Me-Not-Young-Gardeners, Alnwick Northumberland; Living Medicine, London