Can You Dig It? Housing Gardening Competition 2026 Open 🌱

South Derbyshire District Council is delighted to launch its Housing Gardening Competition 2026, inviting Council housing tenants to showcase their green-fingered talents.

Whether you grow your own vegetables, create colourful flower displays, or take pride in transforming your street with planters and hanging baskets, this competition is a chance to celebrate the creativity and community spirit that gardening brings.

🌸 Competition Categories

Tenants can enter one or more of the following categories:

• Best Community Garden

• Best Individual Garden

• Best Window Boxes / Tubs / Planters

• Best Vegetable Patch

• Children’s Garden

• Best Street

All category winners will go head-to-head for the coveted title of Best Overall Garden 2026.

Prizes will be awarded to winners and runners-up in each category, with a special award for the overall winner. Full details of the prizes will be shared in an upcoming newsletter.

📅 Key Dates

• Entries open: October 2025 (now open)

• Closing date for entries: 30 May 2026

• Judging: July 2026 (when gardens are at their best)

• Winners announced: Autumn 2026 newsletter

🌼 How to Enter

Entering is simple. Tenants can:

• Complete the online form: Can You Dig It? Gardening Competition 2025 – Fill out form

• Complete the application form ^{(pdf, 1.2mb)} and return it by post to:
  Community Engagement Officer, Civic Way, Swadlincote, Derbyshire, DE11 0AH

• Hand the form in at Customer Services

• Or apply by email: tenant.participation@southderbyshire.gov.uk

Gardening has the power to brighten homes, strengthen communities and support wellbeing. We can’t wait to see the wonderful spaces our tenants create across South Derbyshire.

If you’re a housing tenant with a passion for plants, now is the time to get involved - let’s dig in and make 2026 bloom! 🌷

25 February 2026