WATCH: Lottery winners come together to give pre-schooler garden at Peterborough's Sacrewell Farm a makeover

Scarewell Farm’s Seedlings Garden has been given a whole new makeover by a team of National Lottery winners.

A determined team of millionaires, armed with paint brushes and power tools visited the farm in Thornhaugh on Thursday (October 3) to transform the farm’s garden used for pre-school children to visit.

Sacrewell Farm runs a weekly Seedlings group for children between the ages two and four- based at site’s sensory garden- to give children a chance to see what’s growing in the veg beds, to get mucky in the mud kitchen, and to explore a range of free flow activities linked to the week’s topic.

The group will now benefit from the new facilities provided by the National Lottery and installed by a group of 15 winners.

Sacrewell Farm’s Learning Officer Kirsty Elvin said: “This has come at such a great time with National Lottery celebrating their 30 years but also Scarewell celebrating 60!

"The whole purpose of Seedlings is to offer toddlers the chance to learn about food, farming and its connection with nature, and to really inspire them to engage with the natural world.

“Who knows, the work of the winners may be the catalyst for creating a fture farmer, budding botanist or excited entomologist. Feeding young minds is what we’re all about and we are touched that the winners have given up their time in this way to help."

Among the works completed were overhauling and redesigning the water play all, repainting the mud kitchen, sprucing up the lawn as well as clearing and replanting the wildflower bank.

Each of the winners also decorated and left a piece of stone art in the Seedlings rockery.

Joining in with the work were Katherine and Graeme White, who celebrated a £1m EuroMillions win at Sacrewell in June 2024.

Katherine said: “It’s great to be back and helping to give this fabulous place a bit of a makeover. Quite a few of us volunteering today have spent many happy hours with our little ones at Sacrewell before they went to school so it feels like we are paying abck a favour.

"Graeme and I chose to celebrate our win here as it was our dream to move to the country and we thought celebrating amongst the goats and chickens seemed appropriate!”

Joining Katherine and Graeme on the farm were also a team of volunteers, many of whom had travelled from across the country.

These included Cambridgeshire based winners Holly Saul (£1m, EuroMillions) and Charlotte and Daniel Peart (£1m, Euro Millions) as well as Sarah and Michael Tyler (£1m Lotto) from Kent, Susan and Barry Maddox (£3m National Lottery Scratchcard) from Essex, Richard and Cathy Brown (£6.1m, Lotto) from Suffolk, Maxine Tilbury (£1m, Instant Win game) from Northamptonshire and Sue Richards (£3m National Lottery Scratchcard from Essex).

Sue, a millionaire and grandmother of ten, added: “We all feel passionately about the importance of providing spaces for little ones where they can get off screens and get out into the great outdoors. Hopefully, the work we have done today will help make it even more enticing to get muddy, wet and elbow deep in the wild, while learning just a little more about food and farming.”

The National Lottery will be supporting a number of projects in what is its 30th year. Since its launch in 1994, the National lottery has created more than 7,200 millionaires- at an average of 7 a week.

Players help to generate £30m each week for National Lottery funded projects.

Since 1964, Sacrewell Farm has been run as a charity by the William Scott Abbott Trust with the aim of connecting people of all ages and backgrounds to science, heritage and to the practical art of agriculture.

The charity has previously received a £1.2m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore its watermill to ifs former glory.

The farm also held a 60th anniversary weekend on September 28-29. Some pictures from that weekend are displayed below.