IF you planted marigolds and stocks as a child in a reserved corner of your mum and dad's garden, then an exhibit at the National Botanic Garden of Wales should please you.

A Child's Garden In Wales picked up a silver award at this year's Chelsea Flower Show with its make-do-and-mend attitude and its grow- your-own planting striking a chord.

The plot, in the double- walled garden, evokes a child's garden in the South Wales coalfields, just after the end of the Second World War.

With Britain still short of food, this garden is typical of those that sprung up across the UK at the time. Almost everything in it has been made out of something else, including the pit pony stable turned into a shed, a hobby horse made of socks, a newspaper and string football and plant pots fashioned from recycled Amateur Gardening magazines.

Ysgol Bryn Castell and Heronsbridge School horticulture students and Anthea Guthrie put in the spadework for the exhibit, which was toured by the Duchess of Cornwall at Chelsea.

The plot will be on show at Llanarthne until late summer this year.

So pitch up to be transported back to an era of self-sufficiency and independence.