I never did get round to writing that last post to sum up our Ness Gardens journey. This weekend brings an exciting event to Ness and so it seemed like a good time to reflect.

We were invited to create a new garden for Ness Botanic Gardens back February. Something different, a love or hate 'marmite' garden!  The 900m2 garden located near the potting sheds was soon transformed from a weedy plot with chickens grazing on it into a garden bursting with colour and planted interest. 

Once the design had been finalised and work began it didn’t take long for the on looking visitors to see drastic changes on site.  The advantage to this garden was that the public got a behind the scenes view of the garden being created.  Weather played a massive part in delaying the project, but the rain didn’t get us down.  We carried on through horrendous conditions, trying to form the steep slopes of the turf waves on a slippery mud surface. 

Once we had finished on site at Ness we very quickly moved on to our new plot at RHS Tatton Park Flower Show.  We were now very confident in our ‘turf wave making’ skills and thought that potentially we would have ‘problem free’ show build.  We never build the same garden twice, but the advantage to this project was that the main features had been built previously on the main garden on site at Ness.

Well, that served us right!!!  Nature finds a way of causing problems you would never have dreamt of.  Thinking we were quite far on, and definitely on schedule... the strangest problem we have ever encountered happened.  Rain water had forced our steel pond liner out of the ground!  Well that is certainly a story I won’t tire of telling.  Taking a short amount of time for it to sink in, we then move quickly to rectify the problem.  Things moved fairly smoothly after that.

Once the medals were awarded and we received our Silver Gilt Medal for ‘A Taste Of Ness’, all those problems were a distant memory.  The months of rain and the troubles it caused seemed so long ago, as we stood talking to the public and soaking up all of the wonderful comments!

Back at Ness the ‘Making Waves Garden’ is looking fantastic and the plants definately benefit from the massive amount of rain they received.  This weekend brings ‘Gardener’s Question Time’ to Ness Botanic Gardens and there will be a whole range of celebrity gardeners along with the Ness curator Paul Cook all ready and waiting to answer your gardening questions.

Please come along to Ness Botanic Gardens and see the Making Waves Garden, take part in Gardener’s Question Time and also walk round and see the other changes that are occurring on site.  I have certainly found that you can’t leave it too long between visits, as you miss out on the transformations that are ongoing!