Fresh Air Gardens

London in Bloom announces an exciting new initiative for the 2018 season

London in Bloom Trustees, Judges and Assessors see many attractive and well-managed front gardens across  London.  Many make a positive impact on reducing air pollution and combatting the effects of heat and flooding during extreme weather events.

‘How can I play my part in reducing pollution or improving the local micro-climate?’ is perhaps not the immediate aim or thought of most gardeners when planting up the front garden. But if you can, please consider how you could design and plant your garden in ways that could make a contribution. Plants with hairy leaves, fine leaves or those with sticky or waxy leaves can capture small particles of pollution; evergreen shrubs can create a barrier to pollution, and multi-layered vegetation can create a shading and cooling effect. If you have space, you could even create a ‘rain-garden’ to slow down the rate of storm-water run-off and reduce the risk of surface water flooding.

So please support us and London to improve our environment.  Gardeners really can make a difference and to recognise your efforts and to encourage others, London in Bloom has joined forces with the London Mayors Office and the RHS Greening the Grey program.

So we have designed a simple to enter a competition to recognise your contribution. All that is required is a few short paragraphs describing your Garden and how it helps to reduce the impact on the environment, an image or two taken from different angles. Images should be a minimum of 1mb to enable these to be enlarged for presentation purposes. A list of the plants used  (if you can) would be helpful in deciding on the awards given.

For information about possible plants please go to 

 Entry Form Sheet

Assessment Sheet

Here are two additional web pages which provide good information about the transformation we would like to see in people’s gardens and the second helps to explain the issue in relation to Air Quality.

Fresh Air Gardens:  

What will the assessors be looking for?

Overall Design & Layout