A WILDLIFE ‘oasis’ in The Bourne has been featured on BBC2’s Autumnwatch.

The Middle Bourne Lane community garden was highlighted as part of the wildlife programme’s coverage of the RHS Britain in Bloom awards on Thursday, October 27.

Judges for Britain in Bloom made a special visit to the garden earlier this year, and put it forward for the RHS’s inaugural Conservation and Wildlife Award in association with BBC Springwatch’s ‘Do Something Great campaign’.

According to Autumnwatch presenter Chris Packham, this award recognised “the finalist that best demonstrated duty and commitment to the protection and enhancement of the flora and fauna in their local environment”.

In the end the Middle Bourne Lane community garden lost out to an inner-city woodland in Tower Hamlets, London.

However, the BBC still saw fit to feature the garden as part of its coverage of the ceremony, having visited the garden with an film crew in mid-September.

Describing the Middle Bourne Lane garden as an “oasis for wildlife year-round”, Autumnwatch co-presenter Martin Hughes-Games said it was proof that small-scale people power can be “wonderfully effective” in supporting wildlife.

He added: “Seventy per cent of all stag beetle sightings come from our own gardens and ponds are home to over half of our frogs. So parks, reserves and gardens are now crucial habitats for British wildlife, and the Britain in Bloom award is one way of encouraging this important work.”

Neil Moss, chairman of The Bourne Conservation Group, told the BBC that the Middle Bourne Lane community garden was founded in 2007 and has become a “special place, with a whole mix of habitats”, supported by about 30 active volunteers.

He added: “We have a wildlife pond which supports frogs and newts, aquatic snails and dragonflies, and have put in a number of artificial habitats with the intention to support the bottom echelon of wildlife.”

The Middle Bourne Lane community garden’s appearance on Autumnwatch can be viewed online at bbc.in/2fdnhzs (approximately 40 minutes in) until 8pm on November 26.

For more information about the Bourne Conservation Group’s activities and to get involved, visit the website www.bourneconserva

tion.org.uk.

Farnham as a whole was also recognised at this year’s RHS Britain in Bloom awards with a Silver Gilt prize.