The last
week has been fairly quiet. My furniture has arrived and amazingly,
it is the correct item. My language skills were obviously better than
I believed.
The main
issue has been sourcing the trees that give a sense of maturity. The
plants are selected for damp / waterside conditions so I decided
very early in the design process that I wanted to use Alder.
Alder is
not commonly used by garden designers in urban settings, this is
perhaps because they are not a particularly ornamental tree, in
comparison to Silver Birch and Prunus – both of which have
ornamental attributes . However, this garden is supposed to look wild
and naturalistic and the Alder gives a feeling of authenticity. It
would have been very simple to opt for Salix var. britzensis but I
felt that would have been too obvious.
Alder is not commonly used by garden
designers in urban settings, this is perhaps because they are not a
particularly ornamental tree, in comparison to Silver Birch and
Prunus – both of which have ornamental attributes . However, this
garden is supposed to look wild and naturalistic and the Alder gives
a feeling of authenticity. It would have been very simple to opt for
Salix var. britzensis but I felt that would have been too obvious.
I drove to a nursery near my office in
Brighton to have a look at Alnus incana 'laciniata' and Alnus glutinosa. After spending a good hour standing in front of these
trees I decided that they were too small and too thin. The trees need
to be sturdy and well proportioned as they are very important to the
planting design.
Go for bigger trees then! Not that
simple - My dilemma is that the more mature the tree, the taller it
becomes. Being quite a small garden (7M X 5M) I don't want the trees
to tower over the everything else and create a feeling of
disproportion.
It was back to the office to hit the
phone and find some trees. After much discussion and several phone calls
I found a supplier of 14-16cm girth Alnus incana which are 3.5 M tall
with a clear stem of 2.0M. This is perfect as they will create
a sense of enclosure without being too overbearing.
We have a week to go before we start –
though I nearly turned up yesterday (having got a bit eager and
misreading the exhibitor manual). That would have been a bit
embarrassing if I'd starting digging up a royal park on my own.
Arguing with the park warden.....”yeah, it's for the Chelsea Flower
Show”. It's always the simple things that catch you out!