A STUDENT who designed a prize-winning kitchen garden in Oxford will take his creative eye to Africa.

Oxford Brookes University, along with university caterers Chartwells, ran a kitchen garden contest at an allotments project on its Wheatley campus.

The prize was for the winner to travel to Malawi with Brookes staff to work with locals to construct, dig and plant a sustainable kitchen garden.

Rather than a trained horticultural student taking the prize, the plot created by Ben Wilkins, 23, who is studying for a masters in osteopathy, that caught the eye of judges from Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons.

Mr Wilkins won because of the variety of vegetables, layout and design of the garden and his use of inter-cropping, where two different plants are beneficial to each other.

He will travel to Malawi on Monday with Brookes staff John Stimpson and Sarah Kerrigan.

Mr Wilkins, who lives in Cowley, said: “I’m looking forward to gardening in a very different climate than the UK and identifying and utilising the techniques and crops used in a tropical location. I’m hoping to gain new and varied knowledge from other, experienced trip members and the Malawian people, and more importantly, help in any way I can.”

Operations project manager Sarah Kerrigan also won her place on the trip after explaining to judges why she wanted to take part.

She said: “I’m delighted to have been given the opportunity to visit Malawi and see in action the projects which Oxford Brookes supports.This work provides clean drinking water to communities in Africa.”

The garden has been designed with input from Mr Wilkins and expertise from the university’s sustainability team and The One Foundation, a charity which the university has supported for the past four years.

As well as constructing the new garden, the Brookes trio will visit an innovative water ‘play-pump’ at Nkhonde School, which has been funded by sales of bottled ‘One Water’ at Brookes.

The pump works by children playing on a specially designed merry-go-round and provides clean water for more than 1,300 people in the region.