IT was a right chip off the old block for celebrity gardener Chris Beardshaw at Malvern's Spring Gardening Show, when a surprise gift really took him back to his roots.

Several months ago, Chris, who was born and brought up at Broad Green, near Broadwas, presented a television programme from Worcestershire about Croome Landscape Park.

In it, he said he was saddened by the fate of one of the park's old oak trees, which had been cut down because it was diseased.

However, watching the programme was John Bennison, a wood turner from Ridgeway Cross, on the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border, who managed to obtain a section of the old tree from timber consultant Roy Finch, of Welland.

John then fashioned a 10-inch plate from the wood and presented it to Chris at the Spring Gardening Show.

"I was absolutely made up," said the TV gardener. "As a lad growing up in Worcestershire, I cycled all over the place and Croome Court was one of my favourite haunts.

"The old tree used to stand directly in front of the Court and I would sit beneath it and gaze across the landscape.

"I was really sad to find it had been cut down, but it was such a surprise to discover someone would go to so much trouble."

"Chris is such a nice bloke and he seemed so downhearted that his favourite tree was no more, I thought a memory of it would be a nice keepsake," said John Bennison.

As a climax to the Gardening Show, Chris Beardshaw conducted a charity auction of show items, which raised around £2,000 for Acorns Children's Hospice Trust.

Top lot was £950 paid for a special timber railway carriage, which had been the focal point of the award-winning show garden from Pershore Group of Colleges, while one enthusiast forked out £150 for a single hanging basket made by Chris.

Attendance at the three-day show on the Three Counties Showground was just over 93,000.

"It was a couple of hundred up on last year and, considering the traffic problems on Friday and the dodgy weather on Saturday, we are very happy," said Press officer Sharon Gilbert.