Historic theme for Olympic garden

Millions of visitors are expected at Olympic Park

Amateur gardeners from all over the country are being invited to help design a special Olympic Park garden.

It will be created on a quarter-acre site within the London 2012 Olympic Park and the two winners will work with a team of landscape artists.

The design will incorporate recognition of Shropshire's Much Wenlock Olympian Society, whose games in 1850 inspired the first modern Olympiad in 1896.

A public vote will decide the winners of the under-17 and over-17 classes.

De Coubertin oak

Amateur gardeners from across the country will be asked to submit ideas, expressing the qualities of a British domestic garden within contemporary parkland, so that visitors feel like they are wandering through someone's garden.

Six finalists will be shortlisted by a panel of experts before being put to a public vote in September 2009.

The competition, part of the London 2012 Inspire programme, will be open to all.

The inspiration for the modern Olympic Games can be traced back to British doctor William Penny Brookes who held the first Much Wenlock 'Olympian Games' in 1850.

It was after a visit to Much Wenlock in 1890 that Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, was convinced to organise the 1896 inaugural Olympic Games in Athens.

Gardeners will be asked to consider opportunities to incorporate a 'de Coubertin' oak tree, currently being grown in Kew from seedlings taken from an oak tree de Coubertin planted himself in Much Wenlock, into their garden design.