A TEAM of council staff has earned a gold medal at the annual Royal Horticultural Society's Flower Show.

The show took place at Tatton Park, in Cheshire, and the team, from Chester-le-Street District Council's environmental services, will be able to stand the gold award alongside the council's previous consecutive silver awards.

This year's winning design is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm, which tells of a fearsome dragon and a cunning crusader.

Designed by ground maintenance supervisor Graham Couzens and the grounds maintenance apprentices, the flower bed is a 3-D design that incorporates a wooden sculpture of John Lambton, his crusader's shield and a 3-D botanical design of the dragon.

The team members were modern apprentices Adrian Brown and Robert Lewis, supervisor Graham Couzens, area supervisor Martin Briscoe and Steven Craig.

Mr Craig, the council's grounds care manager, said: "I am proud of achieving this with my team. It is testament to our hard work since October last year. Our work on this project has been part of our apprentice training programme under Graham Couzens' direction.

"The gold award is well deserved and I have to make special mention of Ted Ferry, who came out of retirement to create the structure of the worm from scrap material collected from within the department's transport section."

The winning flower bed will be on show at the Civic Centre in Chester-le-Street from the end of next week to mid-September.