A PROUD mum is putting the finishing touches to her garden which will open this weekend to help her son's charity work.Barbara Malins with her son, Sam, 21, who will spend a year working with youngsters in inner city schools.

Award-winning gardener Barbara Malins has scooped the Bewdley in Bloom top title for the fifth year running. She also came top in a national gardening magazine competition last year when she won a greenhouse.

Mrs Malins, a nursing sister and a mother of three, said: "I have opened my garden before, for a range of good causes including a church and a school.

"But this summer, I have decided to help my son, Sam, who has just graduated from Cardiff University with a degree in psychology.

"He is about to spend a year with a group called Youth for Christ and will work in inner city schools on sports and other projects."

Highlights of the garden at Pleasant Place, Long Bank, Bewdley, include a vegetable garden packed with peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, striped beans, freckled lettuce, kohlrabi and spinach.

Many of the blooms and shrubs which fill the flower garden have been grown from seed and from cuttings by Mrs Malins.

The gardens on the A456 Leominster Road out of Kidderminster will open on Saturday and Sunday, from 2pm until 4pm, and again on August 17 and August 24-25.