Tributes to Joanna Yeates ahead of funeral

TRIBUTES were paid to landscape architect Joanna Yeates as her family prepared to attend her funeral today.

The ceremony to commemorate the life of the 25-year-old will be held at St Mark's Church in Ampfield, Hampshire - the village where she grew up and where her parents, David and Theresa, still live.

She worked as a landscape architect at the Bristol office of design firm BDP, alongside her boyfriend Greg Reardon, 27.

About 100 family members and friends are expected to attend the service.

David Booth, postgraduate programme director, landscape and environment, University of Gloucestershire, said: "Jo was one of those students who you can tell would be destined for great things and it almost goes without saying that she graduated at the end of her studies in July 2010 with a distinction from her postgraduate diploma.

"The university is honoured to be able to remember Jo through an annual landscape design prize in her name sponsored by BDP as a tribute."

Miss Yeates's next-door neighbour Vincent Tabak, 32, has been charged with her murder. The Dutch engineer, who works at Buro Happold in Bath, is to stand trial in October.