Fancy Olympic 2012 Gold for Gardening? Just Join the Queue

It was not immediately clear whether tea drinking, queueing and complaining will be similarly celebrated in 2012. But as the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, unveiled a public competition yesterday to design a quintessentially British garden within the Olympic park, she promised it would showcase one of the nation's favourite pastimes to the world.

Organised in conjunction with the Royal Horticultural Society, the competition will invite amateur gardeners to submit ideas for a 1,000 sq metre site in the park which will be immediately recognisable as a British garden and also commemorate the origins of the modern Olympics.

Three finalists in each of two categories - 16 or under and 17 or over - will be chosen by a panel of experts and then put forward to an X Factor-style public vote.

Jowell said: "London 2012 will showcase everything that's great about Britain, and there's nothing quite as reassuringly British as spending an afternoon pottering around the garden. That's why I want to see a Great British Garden on the Olympic park. If gardening were an Olympic sport then green-fingered Brits would win gold, silver and bronze," she added. "So what better way to build it than by digging into the well of gardening talent and enthusiasm across the country?"

The two winning entrants will then work with the landscape architects and garden designers employed on the park to bring their designs to life.

The park, set within land that has been decontaminated and cleaned up to host the Olympics, is considered a key factor in setting a tone for the games and providing a lasting legacy for the area.

The first of a series of bridges over the waterways that criss-cross the site, considered essential to turn the park from an impractical wasteland into a usable public space, was lifted into place by the Olympic Delivery Authority yesterday.

Jowell said that the designs should also reference the inspiration for the modern Olympic Games, which has been traced back to a 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 inspired to organise the 1896 inaugural games in Athens.

Entrants 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.

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, who will oversee the legacy use of the park and the sporting venues it contains after the Olympics, said: "Britain has the best gardens in the world, so it is fitting that the Olympic Park will show off our top gardening talent in this way, also creating a wonderful garden for Londoners to enjoy for many years after the games."

Baroness Ford, the former chair of the regeneration body English Partnerships that was responsible for securing a future for the Millennium Dome, was earlier this week appointed chair of the recently created 2012 legacy delivery company.

She will be responsible for ensuring that legacy plans for the park are co-ordinated with wider regeneration aims for east London.

The move might also be seen by some as an attempt to contribute towards another much-hyped Olympic target - to get 2 million more people active by 2012. The Liberal Democrats revealed last week that the government had quietly widened the criteria in January to include activities such as gardening.