A HOSTEL for homeless people has been given a spruce up by its tenants.

Michael House, in Boscombe, has received a fresh lick of paint, and residents have also put months of work into producing a prize-winning garden.

At the South and South East in Bloom Awards they achieved Level 5 - Outstanding in the Community Garden category.

They’ve had help from different quarters, including Johnstones Paint and the Woodland Trust, which gave the hostel a pack of 25 native shrubs to create a wildlife wall and entice more animals into the garden. The tenants now share their space with two hedgehogs.

Manager Mark Horsford said: "Every time someone new comes through the door they bring a different skill set.

"A lot of our recent tenants have been green-fingered."

And resident Vasco said: "It’s somewhere you can go and think about your life, reflect and relax a bit."

The 25 bed hostel was set up at the millennium to help tenants address issues that have kept them on the streets, particularly low self-esteem, so they can move on to permanent accommodation.