Residents, community groups and young gardeners have been recognised in Camden’s 2026 Camden in Bloom competition, which celebrates practical work in gardens and shared outdoor spaces across the borough. The awards span six categories, from front gardens and food growing to nature-friendly planting, rain gardens, street trees and gardening by children.
The Mayor of Camden invited this year’s winners to a celebration at the Town Hall. The competition’s format recognises work in different settings rather than a single style of gardening: entries included individual front gardens, a community allotment, a habitat-rich garden and an adopted planting bed at a road junction.
Louise Balcombe took the Best Front Garden award for a display combining herbs, ferns and flowers. The mix brings together plants grown for different purposes and forms, illustrating how a small domestic frontage can accommodate more than one kind of planting.
Mill Lane Garden Centre won the community food-growing category for its allotment in Hampstead. The garden is tended by disabled adults, children from a nearby special educational needs school and local volunteers. The entry therefore reflects a shared growing space involving people with different ages and experiences, as well as the cultivation of food.
Co-operation Town Community Garden received the nature-garden award. The space is described as species-rich and used by moths, butterflies and bees. Its recognition places wildlife habitat alongside more familiar measures of gardening achievement, such as flowers or food production.
Jacek Turniak won the rain-garden category for an adopted bed at the junction of Savernake Road and Constantine Road. He has managed the bed for two years. The competition’s inclusion of this category highlights a form of gardening rooted in a particular public-space location, rather than a private garden plot.
This year also brought a new Treemendous Trees award, intended to encourage residents to help keep young street trees alive through summer conditions. Alison Wood received first prize for watering the young tree outside her home during the summer drought. The recognition focuses on ongoing care after planting: establishing and maintaining a street tree depends on attention during its early years.
The youngest entrants were recognised through Camden Young Gardeners. Seven-year-old Alex Goodall-Murphy was rewarded for growing soft fruits and wildflowers in his back garden. Eight-year-old brothers David and Daniel Beydoun also received prizes for helping to care for their front garden during the hot spring and summer months.
Across the six sections, the winners’ work ranges from cultivating edible plants to supporting pollinators and looking after young trees. The shared element is sustained attention to outdoor space, whether at home, in a community allotment or on a street. The awards also make room for contributors who may not have a conventional private garden, including groups caring for communal sites and residents tending adopted beds.
The top three entries in each category received a certificate and vouchers from Camden Garden Centre and Veolia. By recognising several placements across each section, the competition acknowledges a wider field of participants beyond the individual first-place recipients. Together, the categories present gardening as a range of everyday activities: growing, sharing, creating habitat and caring for established or newly planted green spaces.
