Defensive Gardening award presented to Gloucestershire Constabulary

Gloucestershire Constabulary's Schools Unit has won a national Secured by Design award for an innovative crime prevention campaign which they coordinated in Autumn 2009.

The award was given to Gloucestershire Constabulary in recognition of their work and collaboration undertaken with local garden centres and schools, meeting the objectives of discouraging crime by educating developers and homeowners and helping them focus on the layout of homes and gardens to make them as secure as possible.

The Gloucestershire campaign concentrated on raising awareness among the public on how they can better protect their gardens by adopting Smartwater, using defensive gardening techniques and fitting a shed alarm. These measures were intended to allow people to take positive steps to reduce the risk of thefts from their gardens. To help people identify suitable products and shrubs and highlight how thorny plants can protect their gardens from intruders, the campaign adopted a cartoon character logo that appeared on related merchandise- school children from the Severnbanks Primary school near Lydney helped choose the character's name 'Spiky' (pictured below).

Local gardening consultant Julian Dowle kindly endorsed the campaign and helped to launch it on the 1 October 2009.

Gloucestershire Constabulary's Schools Unit now intend to extend the campaign to the rest of Gloucestershire in the spring and summer of 2010, with the help of other garden centres, schools and local communities.