Celebrating our 2026 winners 🌻🌱

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This summer, we’ve been celebrating the creativity, enthusiasm and green-fingered skills of our residents through two fantastic community initiatives – our Tallest Sunflower Competition and our new Sustainable Green Space Award.

We’ve loved seeing the time and effort residents have put into their entries, from growing impressive sunflowers to creating outdoor spaces that support wildlife and make the most of what they have.

🌻 Our tallest sunflower competition

Earlier this summer, we invited children aged under 16 living in Havebury homes to grow their very own sunflower and see how tall they could make it grow.

We sent out free sunflower seeds and tape measures to help our young gardeners get started, and we were amazed by the entries we received.

After all the final measurements were submitted, our three tallest sunflowers were shortlisted, and our team visited the winners to check their measurements and take some photos.

And our winners are Lana and Lulu🎉

Their sunflower measured an impressive 101 inches.

Our winner’s received a £10 book voucher and an art box each.

The runners up were Ella Grace, Dulcie and Bonnie.

A huge well done to everyone who took part. We hope you enjoyed watching your sunflowers grow as much as we enjoyed seeing your entries.

🌱 Celebrating sustainable outdoor spaces

We also launched our brand-new Sustainable Green Space Award this year as part of our focus on sustainability.

The award was created to celebrate residents who are finding creative and practical ways to make their gardens, balconies and communal outdoor spaces better for the environment and local wildlife.

We were looking for spaces that demonstrated things such as:

  • Supporting wildlife and biodiversity
  • Conserving water and making the most of natural resources
  • Growing food or creating compost
  • Reusing materials and reducing waste
  • Making the most of smaller spaces
  • Coming up with creative and affordable ideas that others could try at home

We received some fantastic entries, and our panel of judges had the difficult job of choosing the winners.

🏡 Individual outdoor space winner

Congratulations to Debbie.

Debbie’s space highlighted that you don’t need a lot of room to create a beautiful sustainable space. From a wide range of plants and areas for wildlife to thrive including a bug hotel, reusing pots and materials to help reduce waste, and recycling water for watering. It was a clear winner with our judges.

🌿 Communal outdoor space winner

Congratulations to Thingoe Lodge.

This communal space highlighted what can happen when a community work together.

From harvesting the nettles to make nettle juice, growing their own food for community dinners, a wide range of plants and flowers and their own wormery they really were a clear winner with our judges.

We also had two highly commended spaces

Deborah – individual space

Deborah showcased such a wide variety of plants and pollinators. Her use of solar panel lights, and growing her own vegetables and herbs was a stand out point for our judges.

Jessica – Communal space

Jessica wants to ensure that all residents who use the communal area have something to enjoy. From hedgehog homes, to her use of water butts and compost bins and sharing fruit with her community. Her passion really impressed the judges.

Check out all of our shortlisted entries

A big thank you to everyone who took part

A huge thank you to everyone who entered either competition this summer. It’s been brilliant to see residents getting involved, trying something new and sharing their ideas with us.

From a towering sunflower grown by a young resident to creative ways of supporting wildlife and making outdoor spaces more sustainable, these competitions have shown just how much can be achieved with a little imagination.

We hope our winners inspire even more residents to get involved with future Havebury competitions and community activities.

Congratulations to all of our 2026 winners, and thank you for helping us make our communities greener, more creative and more connected. 🌻💚

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