For the Girlguiding UK Centenary Garden I've designed for Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, I spent a lot of time last autumn going out and visiting lots of guiding groups from Rainbows up to the Senior Section, and everything in between. It was great fun! The youngest guiding members at several groups drew some lovely pictures for me of how they'd like this flagship garden, which celebrates their Centenary year, to look. At one point, I did feel somewhat redundant as their colourful designs were so much better than my meagre scribbles. As you can see from the delightful image above, colourful flowers are a must have for the show garden. I'm on the case, girls

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A week until we are on site at Chelsea. Maggy Howarth, who is creating a rather fabulous Peacock pebble mosaic, has been dashing across the country gathering more stones for her creation. She is using a mixture of green slate, pebbles of varying colours and sizes and semi-precious stones including Lapis Lazuli to bring highlights of colour to the peacock's tail. The mosaic path is quite wide at nearly 3 metres and leads up to the 'throne', the awesome splendour of the Victorian aviary itself. The path is made in large sections and will be fitted together on site, rather like a large jigsaw: hope they don't lose any of the pieces!

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Last week, after a delightful three hour drive on the M25 negotiating the roadworks near Rickmansworth, I arrived at Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants near Whitchurch, Hampshire to see how the perennials are doing for the Chelsea garden. I was expecting to see neat rows of pots full of brown soil with the occasional green shoot pushing it's head above the parapet. Instead I saw masses of lush foliage and buds forming, ready to push upwards and produce spikes of glorious flowers in a few weeks' time.

Rosie and Rob Hardy and Hilary have been tending my 'babies' with intense care (they will, no doubt, be laying claim that the plants are actually their babies at the moment and I am merely a foster mother-in-waiting) and are nurturing each plant with care, attention and plentiful feeds. As it stands, there is only one or two lines that may not make the garden so we discussed alternatives for rounding up now for the Chelsea treatment. However, it all depends as always on the weather: four weeks today and the plants will be settling into their alloted spaces on Main Avenue at Chelsea and who knows what will happen between then and now. A heatwave

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I've been in Cumbria for two days on a flying visit to see how progress is going with various items for the Victorian Aviary Garden at Chelsea. The aviary itself is being made from scratch by a talented team of Cumbrian craftsmen: the design is influenced by the ornate Victorian aviary at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire (home of the Rothschild's). First sight of our aviary and its the sheer size and imposing grande elegance that takes your breath away, despite that the building isn't finished yet (it's just had a galvanising coat on the metal) and has been erected in a temporary home in a garage next to the the railway line

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An area of the Girlguiding UK Centenary garden at Hampton Court show will have plants that were around in 1909 (when the Guide movement began), planted in the style of Gertrude Jekyll. Last November, I spent a few hours in the Lindley Library at RHS HQ in London researching plants that were in cultivation in 1909, or earlier. William Robinson's books 'The English Flower Garden' (which had sections written by Jekyll) were helpful as were old copies of 'The Garden' and 'The Gardeners' Chronicle' (and such fun to read!). Old seed catalogues were also a mine of information. Of course, more than half the plant names have changed now due to taxonomy and nomenclature changes.

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