My Garden

I think that's it, I think I'm finished - both the live show coverage and physically! I've been on the showground since six o'clock this morning finishing putting up the awards details and mopping up the last pictures we need. I've been putting them up live on the website and now I think everything is complete.

This means I can now go home

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Press Day at Chelsea has been a great success - both for the show itself and the RHS Online team.

All the displays look fantastic and, all in all, this year's show is going to delight, and possibly surprise, all the visitors. I know there have been some comments on the forum that many of the gardens have a green theme (the colour green that is, but many also have a green 'eco' theme) and are lacking colour, but I think it's a refreshing change. After all, green is a colour too and the green and white shades provide a really peaceful and restful feel to the show

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Well, here we are at Press Day at Chelsea - also unofficially known as celebs day, since a lot of TV, film, radio and other celebrities also come for a good look around. And, of course, the queen will be arriving later this afternoon.

It's a beautiful day and the show ground is looking fantastic - as are the gardens, floral displays in the Great Pavilion and everything else at the show

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The excitement is mounting. I'm in the Press Tent on the showground, just checking that my computer works and I have everything set up to start producing the live coverage of the show.

And it's all go here at the moment. The show is taking shape nicely and there are some cracking gardens. Despite the rain over the past few days, most of the gardens look well advanced and, unlike this time last year, there doesn't seem to be an overall air of panic. Last year the weather leading up to the show was horrendous and many of the gardens looked like they would never be finished! But it takes more than several inches of rain to put off the hardy show exhibitors and, of course, everyone finished their displays in time for judging

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As Web Editor for RHS Online one of the best bits of my job is going to Chelsea - and the other RHS shows - especially being able to look around before the show opens and see how things are progressing.

It's not a big 'jolly' though by any figment of the imagination - long days, early starts, late nights and lots of running around like a loon with my camera and notepad

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It may be cold and frosty at night outside on the nursery, but for the favoured few plants selected to be grown on for Chelsea it is warm and cosy inside our 'Chelsea' or 'Rubrum' houses.

The new stems on the mare's tail Equisetum hymenale are moving very quickly upwards now with the longer days and are very striking in both their form and upright habit

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The nursery is very busy with customers orders, we have just had a late shipment of our special elm trees in from the USA with all the fun that that entails and of course now that the show plants we potted for Chelsea are in active growth the first successes as well as casualties are becoming evident.

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This will be our 7th year at Chelsea and, although we have always exhibited in the Grand Pavilion, as we will again this year, for 2008 we thought we might make things even more interesting by jointly undertaking a small garden in conjunction with Paul Hensey of Elysium Design. He takes a modern approach to garden design with a frequent, and imaginative use of grasses that we have long admired.

Of course, Chelsea in May is a very silly time of year for a grass nursery to be showing its wares. It is now well-known that one of the most important contributions grasses can make to any gardens is to extend the season of interest. They do this naturally as the great majority, of deciduous grasses in particular, are at their peak later in the season-long after May has passed. Sillier still then to commit to not one, but two projects at this year's show

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The result at Malvern with The RHS Gold Medal and Best in Show was fantastic and really sets the tone for the year ahead!   Obviously, I am personally pleased with how well it did, but the biggest pleasure is that it rewards the team behind it all and especially the girls at Adcote School.  It's great that the garden stood up so well despite the appalling weather but thank you to everyone who braved the wind and rain - we really hope you enjoyed the show.  There's no doubt in my mind that the one thing that stole the show were the Gloucester Old Spot pigs - they arrived with no names but left christened Buttercup and Primrose!

We literally ran from Malvern down to Chelsea where the hard landscape on the stand was almost complete with the pathways and hedges in and our summerhouse ready for decorating.  The rather mercurial British summer weather has continued, so one minute we are in T-shirts and the next minute we are all standing under bin bags and we have to tread carefully through the mud so as not to go flying

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‘You must be mad’ is a comment that’s been leveled at me often over the last few weeks as it comes to light to many that I have designed and am in the process of building no less than three major RHS show gardens this year.  For me and my teams it is the culmination of nearly a year’s worth of work and it’s at this point that it starts getting really exciting!

I am just putting the finishing touches to the garden I have produced for The Three Counties at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show which I have worked together with Adcote School for Girls, based up in Shrewsbury.  It’s been a fantastic and fast moving project to work on and aims, I hope, to demonstrate what a typical homestead in the Three Counties area would have looked like in the mid 1800’s.  The main purpose has been to highlight the skills, expertise and understanding such people had of the land, crops and livestock around them and how the subtle beauty and diversity of the Three Counties has been shaped.  Hopefully it will inform future generations about the landscape as they in turn become the custodians. 

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