Garden plan to celebrate Olympics role

Much Wenlock's role in inspiring the birth of the modern Olympic Movement is to be marked by a Great British Garden to be created in London's 2012 park, it was announced today.

Green-fingered Brits will have the chance to design the garden in the Olympic Park in a nationwide competition to be run in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said.

The garden is meant not only to showcase one of the UK's favourite pastimes, but will specifically commemorate the Olympian Games held in Much Wenlock in 1850.

The games were the brainchild of William Penny Brookes and eventually led to the formation of the Much Wenlock Olympian Society.

It was after a visit to the Shropshire town in 1890 that Pierre de Coubertin, who is considered the founding father of the modern Olympics, organised the inaugural games in Athens in 1896.

People entering the garden design competition will be asked to incorporate a "de Courbertin" oak tree currently being grown at Kew Gardens from seedlings taken from an oak tree he planted himself in Much Wenlock.

Ludlow MP Philip Dunne, who has campaigned for the Shropshire town's role to be celebrated at the Olympics, said: "I am delighted that the role of Much Wenlock and Dr Penny Brookes is to be recognised on the London 2012 site."

Amateur gardeners from the country are being asked to submit ideas for a quarter acre site, expressing the unique qualities of a British domestic garden within contemporary parkland.