A SOUTHAMPTON resident has transformed a public flowerbed after it became rundown and littered with rubbish.

Sarah Wakely, 38, an artist who lives in Suffolk Avenue, Shirley embraced her green fingers by regenerating the flowerbed with a friend - known as 'guerrilla gardening' due to its public location.

Becoming sick of the site of the unofficial dustbin on her doorstep, Sarah told the Daily Echo: “I wanted to give something back to the community and make the corner a bit more pretty.

“Essentially, we gave the disused flowerbed a bit of a makeover because before it was unfinished by the council after they pedestrianised the area a little bit as St. Mark’s Primary School is nearby, but they didn’t quite get round to our little corner and some people would throw their empty cans and rubbish in there which made it look really rundown.

“I live in the road and it’s something I see every day, so we took it upon ourselves to make it look better. We weeded the flowerbed and got rid of all the waste that was there before adding in the plants and watering them later on. So, we did it in about four stages over the course of one day and it felt really good.”

Daily Echo:

Part of Sarah rejuvenating the green space with a friend was due to the fact she was worried her landscape efforts might receive a negative response.

Thankfully the feedback she’s received has been quite the opposite.

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She said: “I think it makes you feel good to do something good for other people and the responses we’ve got are really positive which is nice because we were a little bit worried it might get a negative response if people weren’t sure what we were doing.

“We’ve had lots of people walk up to us and say how nice it looks and I even saw online on a community group that someone just wanted to say ‘thank you to whoever made the flowerbed look nicer’ not knowing it was me that did it, so it’s been quite overwhelming.

“We’ve even had someone suggest that they might donate some flowers for us to add which is brilliant, so I think it’s a case of – ‘more hands make little work.’”

Sarah added: “I love gardening and I love plants, so it was something I enjoyed doing, it didn’t feel like hard work.

“I know in California they add fruit trees to other trees and people can pick up fruit as they go by. It would be great to do more in the future if we’re able to, but I think it’s important to take care of the local community.”