Diary of our garden build

We have just started work on our own garden and I have decided to keep a diary of how it progresses.

I was lucky that we moved house just as I finished my course at The Oxford College of Garden Design, as it meant I had a blank canvas of a garden to work with. I don't think I would have had such a free rein to re-do it if it was an established plot. So I have started from scratch and have found designing my own garden more of a challenge than I expected. Perhaps this is because I know there are certain expectations from friends and family - but mostly because I desperately want it to work. Gardens are pretty expensive to do well and although I think it will add value to the house (economically and from a lifestyle point of view), I really don't want to make any costly mistakes.

It's a year and a half since we moved in and over that time the design has been modified and simplified but crucial attention has been given to materials and details. I think this in an interesting point for people to think about when they set about doing their own garden. Don't rush the process - living with the space gives you such a good idea of how you would like to use it. This is a common piece of advice given to people about to make changes to their homes and I feel it applies as much to the garden. Also, as is so often the case, when people are carrying out work to their house the garden usually comes last when patience for building and funds are running low, so it's worth thinking carefully about it.

I have managed to nudge the priority of the garden slightly up the never-ending list of things to do and it has overtaken the need for floors in the house...I convinced my husband that we really didn't want new floors being ruined by the mud bath that had become our garden during the build!

So after Day 1 this is how the garden looked....trenches for electrics dug and the garden in chaos! Let's hope for a little more order tomorrow.

Interview with Horticulture Week

Thank you Horticulture Week for a great interview!
http://www.hortweek.com/news/bulletin/dailybulletin/article/1056271/?DCMP=EMC-CONHorticultureWeekBulletin

The Show is Over....

The RHS London Plant and Design Show is now over and I am very happy to have a relaxing day at home, catching up on a few jobs and not having 16 hour days...as they have been for the last 5 days.

I was awarded a Silver-Gilt medal - a step up from my Silver last year - so heading in the right direction - but God...I would have liked a gold! I didn't feel so bad about feeling this way after chatting to Tony Smith - who, having 5 Gold medals to his name and a few silver-gilts, told me that you're never really happy unless you get a gold...that's just the way it is!

I am now starting to plan for my conceptual garden at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show this summer and getting back to work as normal with some exciting new design projects.

Nearly there

London Plant and Design Show - Build Up:


Just finished 2 days of building - yesterday started early and ended very late - thank you to my brilliant husband and fantastic builder for all their hard work.

It's Exhausting!!! Everything always takes longer than expected - loading and unloading the van took the majority of the first day and we did not even start building until 3 o'clock.


However, everyone worked hard and by the end of today I am at a fairly good stage. I still have a few things to do tomorrow to finish it off before the 4pm deadline - normal life still goes on, so I can not get up to London until after the school runs. I have a schedule for the next three days stuck to the fridge - so that the kids know who's supposed to be where, when and with what!

I've had no time to prepare a talk for the London Plant and Design show and was fairly relaxed until I heard that John Brooks (MBE) - ..."most influential designer in the 20th Century" will also be speaking - I am now wondering why on earth I volunteered to speak.

However, I am really looking forward to this show. I have not visited it before, and it looks like it will be a very intimate and friendly affair - and also over pretty quickly. Plans are already well underway for breakdown on Wednesday. After two and a half days of building we have just 4 hours to get it out of the halls - sounds like a tall order to me.

So, I am well into my second show garden and I realise that I do really enjoy them - I like the buzz, the event organising side, the number of people you need to be in touch with - and seeing a project come together from design to build in such a short space of time. I just wish I could finish our own 'building-site-of-a-garden' to the same discerning standard. Seems a long way off right now!





End Of Day 2....getting there




The Martha Schwartz lecture on Thursday night inspirational - her projects were immense and dynamic and I feel like Garden Design might be the tip of the iceberg...perhaps a further career in Landscape Architecture awaits...More on that later.

Pre-build....

It's about now that the pressure of a show garden really builds...everything is being delivered over the next few days - artwork came yesterday, leaflets arrived today, planters and furniture arrive tomorrow - so it's all go and the adrenaline has started to work it's magic - in that I seem to be able to survive on very little sleep!

My plants have arrived as well which is very exciting - for the middle of February I think they're looking pretty good. The frost has got to a few of them, so I have been meticulously snipping off each and every damaged leaf...a therapeutic process but one that does produce the occasional... "Why, on earth, I am doing this?"

I had a call from my furniture suppliers today and there has been a mistake with the delivery...not the best news I had all day, as the manufacturers are in Denmark. After establishing that it was pretty improbable that we could get the correct piece of furniture here on time, I have realised that I will have to work with what I have. I'm giving a talk on Show Garden Building at an RHS seminar on Wednesday (yes...the same day as the show is on, nothing like piling on the work load) - and I have included in my talk a section on the fact that mistakes happen and you just have to solve the problem the best way possible. So, I am adamant not to get stressed about it.

We have started to construct the garden so that all is ready for the 2 and a half day build that starts on Saturday. Here is John-William, my trusty builder, steadily cutting the porcelain tiles - not an easy job.

I'm having an evening off tonight and heading up to Oxford to listen to the eminent Landscape Architect Martha Schwartz, and to catch up with some of my college friends who I haven't seen for ages - can't wait.

A Roof top Terrace

3 weeks to go until my next show garden 'Sky-Green Living' goes on display at the RHS London Plant and Design Show.

Just before Christmas I had a call from the RHS asking if I would be interested in designing a garden for this London show - the first in the RHS shows calender. After designing my garden for BBC Gardener's World Live last year, I think I had been hesitant about doing another show garden - especially on a tight budget - but here I am getting on with another one. I felt flattered that the RHS had asked me and am very excited now to be doing another show. The brief for this garden was simply to design a roof terrace 5m x 4m in size. I am especially excited by the chance to showcase tiles from Royal Mosa, Netherlands, furniture from Cane-line in Denmark and artwork from LSd in Italy, combined, these provide a contemporary sleekness which will be softened by green roof and living wall planting - which happened to be in line with the RHS's push for urban greening - more on that later.

Just under 3 weeks to go until I start putting it together at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London, SW1. With only 2 days to build this garden it's going to be a different experience to last year's show, with virtually all the garden pre-made. I'll be keeping a diary on progress and explaining the design over the next few weeks. Until then....

Bulldog Tools.....Spade Review

Bulldog tools http://www.bulldoghandtools.co.uk/ sent me two spades to test - a shrubery spade and a rabbiting spade and at last I have put them to use.

As I hope you can see from the photo the two spades are well made and attractive to look at - so ideal for both the hardened gardener and fair weather digger alike. Having never paid too much attention to the variety of spades on offer and their different functions, I have been enlightened by these two and got a feel for the differences and how they are fit for their purposes.



Shrubery Spade (see left) - a spade with a small head ideal for a smaller user or for tight spaces. This is a very neat little spade which is easy to use and as it says can fit in between plants in a shrub border. It is also particularly effective in hard ground as the smaller head allows more pressure on the ground.

Rabbiting spade - ideally meant for digging holes for fence posts in confined areas. I didn't have any fence posts to put in this weekend but we did have to dig a hole half a metre deep to sink a 12ft trampoline into the ground - perfect road test! We're on quite stoney ground that I had tried to dig up before but gave up, quickly condemming the ground as totally rubbish and full of builders rubble.

However, after using the rabbiting spade with it's tapered, sharp end, breaking up the stoney ground became a far easier job and has made me less scathing of our soil quality. The T-shaped handle allows you to use both hands on the handle whilst stepping on the blade giving you good control and power. All in all the way it sliced through the compacted ground was very satisfying. The amount of digging we have done over the last 3 days, shifting about 3 tonnes of soil, would test any spade, and the Bulldog tools stood up well with no signs of wear and tear - I wish the same could be said of our aching bodies!

Thanks to Bulldog Tools for the opportunity to use their spades - they're not having them back...but next time could they send us a digger?