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Scientists' plant display wins Chelsea medal

Neve Gordon-Farleigh
BBC News, Cambridgeshire
Nicola Haseler
BBC News, Cambridgeshire
Reporting fromRHS Chelsea Flower Show
Nicola Haseler/BBC Kathy Grube has blonde and pink hair. She is standing in front of an RHS Chelsea Flower Show exhibition. She is wearing a blue floral outfit, a pair of glasses and is looking at the camera and smiling. Nicola Haseler/BBC
Kathy Grube says being at Chelsea is the "perfect marriage" between plants, flowers and science

A university team has won a silver-gilt medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for its interactive plant science exhibit.

The Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge said its garden gave visitors the chance to see how plants attract bees and how bees perceive flowers.

Blooming Numbers features in the show's GreenSTEM section.

Kathy Grube, from the laboratory, said there were "even more amazing beautiful features" in plants at "microscopic level".

"We are all about plants and we thought it would be the perfect marriage for us to come here and share some of the research we are doing," she said.

J.Garget/University of Cambridge A group of eight people huddled in front of flowers, with two women at the front holding their award. They are standing together as part of a group and are all smiling at the camera in front of their exhibition. J.Garget/University of Cambridge
Kathy Grube said the team "jumped up and down" when they saw they had been awarded a medal

The laboratory is researching how the growth of plants can influence crop sustainability and pollinator populations.

Ms Grube explained how judges had laid out their medal for them to find when they turned up to water their plants.

"We were jumping up and down when we found it."

Nicola Haseler/BBC A close-up of leaves and various flowers, of pink, purple and orange. There appears to be a bee hive surrounded by the flowers.Nicola Haseler/BBC
Part of the display is the team's pollinator patch, full of flowers planted at Christmas

The team collaborated with a family-run garden centre in Oakington near Cambridge for the project.

Melanie Sadler, owner of the garden centre, said: "They wanted a garden to match their experiments because bees see something completely different under a UV light, to what we see.

"We have actually chosen these plants to show off what the bees see."

The patch features plants and flowers which have been growing since Christmas, including yellow bidens.

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