THEY’VE done it! A pair of Hampshire gardeners has made the finals of a TV allotment competition.

Kate Bennett and Eleanor Waterhouse’s gardening skills proved fruitful once again on BBC Two’s The Big Allotment Challenge last night – surviving eviction from the competition for the fifth week.

Now the two 63-year-olds from Winchester will go up against the other two remaining teams to be crowned growing champions in the show, which is gardening’s answer to The Great British Bake Off and The Great British Sewing Bee.

The best friends were last night congratulated on winning the ‘grow’ challenge, one of the four weekly challenges, for three weeks in a row with their carrots, aubergines and now onions.

Grandmothers Eleanor, a retired university lecturer, and Kate, a recently retired Shakespeare Infant School teacher, have been growing together for more than 30 years and can often be found planting and harvesting fruit and vegetables in Kate’s garden in Morestead.

They applied to take part in the show when they saw a flier about it at a farmers’ market.

The competition, presented by Fern Britton, started with nine teams and its first episode was watched by more than 2.5m people – more than ITV’s Midsummer Murders.

At least one team has been asked to leave each week. The final episode will be on BBC Two at 8pm tomorrow.