Always believe in, because you are Gold, GOLD! (in the words of Spandeau Ballet)

What do you mean, winning gold has gone to my head? It’s all over now in what feels like the blink of an eye, but I’m still basking in the glow of our tremendous success. I thought I would tie it all off with a bit of a reminisce and reflection of the final days of the show.

The construction and planting of the garden went like a dream, with only one last minute hitch. Where the rills met the raised beds the finish between the black pond liner and the render was proving a bit tricky. We came up with a quick fix solution, and Elliot cut a small section of stone as a detail between the two. Fortunately he still had his cutting tools on site, and enough stone. Did you notice it? The assessors did but the judges didn’t mark us down for it!!

We were all up early for press day, Wednesday 24^th July, even before the gates opened at 7pm, so keen were we to double check everything was OK before any press or the judges arrived at the garden. First at the garden was Monty Don, which made the whole exercise worthwhile for the team at Alzheimer’s Society.  

We made him wait before he could go on the garden until after the judges had been – I didn’t want his mucky boots messing up my lovely paving! This gave the team the chance to chat to him while he waited, with photos taken too. Joe Swift filmed on the garden next to us, and more photos were taken with him. Next up was Chris Bisson, star of Emmerdale, who came on to the garden with his wife. He’s happy for Alzheimer’s Society team to use the photos in their publicity, nice bloke!

We had to scarper whilst the judges prowled the garden so went off to the canteen for tea and a bacon butty. Afterwards, even with the excitement of all the BBC filming, it was a very long wait until the medals were awarded. Tensions were running high as three o’clock came around. An announcement over the tannoy earlier had stated that medals would be given out after 2.30pm.

Then out of the blue I was approached by the secretary of the judges and handed the small bit of card that is the ‘medal’. I turned it over and there was a small golden circle in the middle, hurrah! What an amazing sensation of relief, and joy, after all of the hard work and high expectations, (the latter mainly my own). What a great result for all involved!

Not long after that the Chancellor of the Exchequer visited us, obviously a man of good taste and I had a little chat on the garden with him. Most people asked me why I didn’t push him in the pond but I’m not that rude! And anyway, the water wasn’t that deep, no matter what Elliott said (he told everyone 8 feet, but in fact was only 20 cm).

The next day we had local BBC newsreader Annabel Tiffin filming for the lunchtime and evening news. Lost of great coverage of the garden!

But that wasn’t the end; we then had four full days with the public. The public flocked to the garden with masses of praise and lovely words. Nearly every onlooker seemed to think the garden was beautiful, just like I had hoped. It was a fabulous four days of family, friends and clients coming to see my creation and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the last day when the heaven’s opened and the garden nearly flooded! Masses of press and TV coverage of the garden created great PR for the team from Alzheimer’s Society, as well as lots of interest from visitors to the show requesting information for family or friends living with dementia. All in all we achieved everything we set out to do.

 

The show garden has been such a success, that the team from Alzheimer’s Society have asked if I’ll design them another garden next year, how fab is that? No pressure then. How do I match or do better than this year? Well, there’s always Best in Show and the People’s Choice Award to go for too….watch this space, just like Arnie, I’ll be back!

The plants are all here!

Today is delivery day for the trees, shrubs and perennials. I’m at Ladybrook Nursery by 7.35am to hand pick the best specimens to be delivered to Tatton. Its already tremendously hot even at this early hour and because of the cloud cover, the humidity is high. A hot and sweaty day to look forward to then!

I’m still having dilemmas over how many perennials I actually need and Paul, the owner of Ladybrook Nursery, advises me to take fewer as he can always drop off more if I run out rather than having too many leftover on site. It takes an hour to make my choices and then I’m off to pick up my friend Sandra who has kindly offered a day of her time to help me. She helped me with my last show garden so has some idea of what she’s let her in for. I say some idea. It’s such a hot day that everything we do seems to take twice as long and be twice as heavy to lift! Goodness knows how the guys from Greenbelt are coping in this relentless sun day after day.

 

Sandra has brought her own gazebo (and agreed to leave it for me to use, thank goodness) as it provides some shade to escape to when we start to overheat. We have cool bags packed with ice blocks, which work a treat so I can also offer the guys some ice cold drinks when they start to wilt. 

And after they’ve dug three very large holes for the trees, and lifted then into place. I’d been told the trees were in 110 litre pots but they are actually 160 litres so take all three of them to lug them around.

Elliott pegs out areas the same size as each planting bed so that Sandra and I can set out the plants in their correct positions. When they are finished the guys can transfer the plants straight into the beds exactly as we’ve laid them out. It takes us all day to set out the plants in this heat, and when we’re finished there are only a couple of dozen plants left over which makes my life easy as I can bundle them into my own car and take them back to the nursery, no hastle.

Elliott finished the bespoke stone bench today and looking the bee’s knees! In fact, the whole garden is looking tremendous, just how I have imagined it would look. Lots more of the paving has been completed and the trees are working beautifully against the creamy rendered walls. 

Towards the end of the day, as the light softens, and even though its not finished, everything looks so perfect it’s hard to imagine that it will all be gone in two weeks!!

Second week and full steam ahead!

We’re now into the second week of the build and with only seven days left to finish completely, the guys from Greenbelt Landscapes are still on target and the build is looking great! They did, however, have to work all day Sunday until 6.30pm even though this had originally been planned as a rest day. As they say, no rest for the wicked!!

The weekend was spent rendering the walls, which dried really quickly in the heat. The very last bit however, was put on just towards the end of the day when there was a drop in temperature and they they had to wait around until it dried. The coping stones are now on top of the highest walls, and there’s only a small bit of render left to do in the two apertures in the walls.

When I visited site today, the pond liner had been fitted and the team are now laying the paving from Natural Paving to the edges of the garden. Elliott and Al were getting the levels of the stone coping around the pool just right – within millimetres! This is so that when the water goes in they can fill it as high as possible under the coping so that you cannot see the liner at all. I’d call them perfectionists, which is just what you need when building an RHS garden. Those judges sure can be harsh!

 

I’d arrived today to take delivery of the grasses and David from Wildly Rural was spot on time. There was a slight delay as he had brought his dogs and as they aren’t allowed on site, so he had to bring only one of the two delivery vans on site at a time. The grasses were definitely worth the wait! They have put on lots of growth since I last saw them three weeks ago and many are flowering beautifully, creating a lovely soft swishy look, especially the larger Anemanthele lessioniana. They will look stunning against the cream of the rendered walls!

 

Next stop, Ladybrook Nursery to pick my perennials for delivery on Thursday!

A sneak preview of the planting

It takes me just over two hours to get to Wildly Rural to meet up with David the owner. The weather gets better and better as I drive into the deepest corners of Cumbria to Kirksanton where they are based, and where I have planned to spend a blissful day in the warm sunshine messing about with plants, perfect!

Have you ever read those car reviews where the manufacturer disguises the outline of the car they are testing? Well, it was a bit like that with my planting. You’ll see in these pictures the overall effect that I want to create but we had to have a few ‘stand ins’ for grasses that are not quite ready yet and the perennials that are being supplied by Ladybrook Nursery. So although you think you can tell what it is, its not quite the finished article. You’ll have to come to the show to see that!

We use the grid on the textile ground cover of the nursery floor to mark out in chalk the different beds within my design to the correct dimensions. Its illuminating to see the scale of my garden like this, giving me the first indication of how it will look in reality. We place the appropriate grasses around the space to create the look that I am aiming for, and make note of which plants go with each other and how many fit in the spaces. The first bed takes us almost two hours to complete, as we make lots of tweaks to keep it looking naturalistic and random, which is much harder that it sounds. By the time we set out the last bed, we take only half an hour as we’re cooking on gas and have the plant plan formula all worked out. I add two smaller grasses to the plant plan, as I decide that these are useful fillers to hide large pots and create swathes of lower planting between taller plants.

David’s initial suggestion was for 120 plants in 7.5 litre pots but I may need to up this quantity, as I want to create a mass of texture and movement with the grasses, with only the flower heads of the perennials appearing in small bursts of colour. My next task is to make sense of the sketches and numbers I scribble down and calculate a close approximation of the number of plants that I need.

“I’m now as close as I’ll ever be to a finished planting plan but I just hope that I can replicate all of this again when the plants eventually get to site!”