Garden awards a growth area.

Housebuilder Barratt has scooped a total of eight awards in the national New Homes Garden Awards ( four times more than its nearest rival.

The wins build on the company's outstanding successes in the Greenleaf Awards, which have recognised the quality of the Barratt Group's environmental planning and landscaping on developments nationwide in recent years. In fact, Barratt has won more Greenleaf Awards than any other housebuilder for three years running.

In the newly-launched New Homes Garden Awards, Barratt divisions collected awards for garden environments created over an area from Yorkshire to the South-East. The haul represents almost 30 per cent of all the winning sites.

Supported by the National House Building Council and the New Homes Marketing Board, the awards were presented at a gala inaugural lunch in central London this week.

Barratt Group chief executive David Pretty said: "This clearly demonstrates how Barratt has moved into the vanguard of the movement to create better living environments. Indeed, it is this idea that lies behind our commitment to brownfield regeneration and urban renewal, our commitment to outstanding design and landscaping, and our belief in providing customers with homes in a high-quality, maturing environment."

Professional gardener and journalist Joe Swift, who helped judge the awards, said: "These awards give recognition to the way that good housing landscape can grow to become a valuable environmental asset and the winning developments show that well-designed and managed housing landscapes can help to put heart into the communities of tomorrow."