Lottery winners help spruce up garden for toddlers at charity farm

A group of lottery winners helped spruce up a garden for pre-school children at a charity farm where two of them celebrated their £1 million win earlier this year.

Graeme White, aged 35 at the time of the win, and his wife, Katherine, then 36, said they would continue working as police officers after scooping the cash on the EuroMillions on May 7.

The pair, from Cambridgeshire, celebrated at Sacrewell Farm in Peterborough in June, and they returned their with other lottery winners to help give the garden a makeover.

The group helped clear and replant a bank of wildflowers, repainted a mud kitchen, redesigned a water play wall and spruced up the lawn.

Each of the winners decorated and left a piece of stone art in the rockery, as a memento of their day on the farm and to encourage the pre-schoolers to enjoy and engage with the great outdoors.

Mrs White said it was “great to be back” at the farm and “helping to give this fabulous place a bit of a makeover”.

“Quite a few of us volunteering have spent many happy hours with our little ones at Sacrewell before they went to school, so it feels like we are paying back a favour,” she said.

“Graeme and I chose to celebrate our £1 million win here as it was our dream to move to the country and we thought celebrating amongst the goats and chickens seemed appropriate.

“Incredibly, the same day we popped the champagne corks at Sacrewell Farm, we looked at and bought our dream family home with seven acres – we moved in just three weeks ago.

“I still pinch myself that my long held Little House On The Prairie-inspired dream life has come true, minus the gingham smocks.”

The other lottery winners who joined in with the volunteer project were: Holly Saul, of Cambridge, who scooped £1 million on the EuroMillions in 2021; Charlotte and Daniel Peart, of Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire ,who won £1 million on the EuroMillions in 2018; Sarah and Michael Tyler, from Kent, who won £1 million playing Lotto in 2018; Sue Richards and Barry Maddox, of Essex, who won £3 million on a National Lottery Scratchcard in 2016; Richard and Cathy Brown, from Suffolk, who won £6.1 million playing Lotto in 2013; and Maxine Tilbury, of Northamptonshire, who won £1 million on the National Lottery Instant Win Game in 2022.

Grandmother-of-10 Mrs Richards said: “We all feel passionately about the importance of providing spaces for little ones where they can get off screens and out into the great outdoors.

“Hopefully the work we have done 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.”

Sacrewell Farm’s learning officer Kirsty Elvin said the Seedlings project aimed 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 National Lottery winners may be the catalyst for creating a future farmer, budding botanist or excited entomologist,” she said.

“Feeding young minds is what we’re all about, and we are touched that winners have given up their time in this way to help us do just that.”