My Garden

Only a few days left until the winner will be drawn, it's all pretty nail biting stuff... Visitors to the BFA Marquee at the Tatton Park Flower Show will remember voting for their favourite competitor in order for them to win a FREE bouquet of flowers delivered to their own front door for the whole of next year.

In just a few days the lucky winner will be revealed. Well folks,let me tell you, the tension is rising here in the BFA office. We're probably just as nervous as the unknown winner at the moment!! This prize worth £500,- is quite something to be sniffed at as a matter of fact, in more ways then one. Who wouldn't appreciate a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers in this gloomy times? As the press is having a field day with our global slow down issuing articles on a daily basis in the papers and on the news I honestly feel that we could do with a bit of a break now. Let's have some happy news for a change...

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It's been a while since my last post so here's some news from the BFA camp. Visitors to the BFA Marquee at the Tatton Park Flower Show were in for a bit of a shock when the floristry demonstrators started asking for volunteers from the audience for our Ready, Steady, Floristry! challenge.

After a brief introduction the volunteers were shown the item they would have to re-create following a short demonstration by the florist expert. What the volunteers didn't know though when they had stepped onto the stage was that they would only be given four minutes to create their masterpiece

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Months of planning in advance and then, in just a few days, a whole year of preparations just flies by. But it goes without saying that the event was a huge success and has managed to bridge the gaps in our industry by bringing all the different organisations closer together working along side eachother to deliver a united front for professional floristry.
With this years introduction of retail floristry on BBC national tv in a three minute report as well as numerous local radio, tv and newspaper coverage we have managed to open a door that until now has always remained firmly shut. This acchievement is something we can be incredibly proud of as this long awaited introduction of professional retail floristry to the consumer has certainly kicked of the BFA's four year consumer campaign with a flying start and who knows where we will end up next year!

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This year has been an amazing one for me!  Not only did I receive a Bronze Medal for my first Urban Garden at Chelsea.  But I built my biggest and best (if I say so myself) garden at Tatton Park.

I think that it is safe to say I bit off a little more than I could chew by attempting to build two gardens at Tatton this year.  Sadly the little Back to Back Garden - Time Out was renamed as... 'The Neglected One!'  The plants I had arranged for the small garden sadly did not arrive, and were substituted.  Therefore the garden did not look like it did in my head when I was designing it, and further more I ran out of time.  We all agreed that the Show Garden - Aqua Life had to come first, and so took priority.  'Time Out' received a Bronze Medal, which considering all the problems was acceptable

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Pheweeee!  Stop the world, I want to get off! 

It was true, all the pearls of wisdom, advice, warnings and predictions.  And a real rollercoaster ride of a journey.  But for Floral & Hardy's first ever RHS show experience, I can honestly say that it went really quite well, no major disasters other than Hugh's truck breaking down off-site with him in it, mid-afternoon of the day before judging with still half the planting to finish

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 Sometimes new things at flower shows aren't flagged up. There are reasons for this. For example on Elizabeth MacGregor's stand in the Floral Marquee there are several new plants including a fabulous blue Eryngium ' Lapis Blue', but something weird and wonderful lurks in the border.

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In the Floral Marquee there's a weed. It's official and it's been seen. What's more the stand it is on has been awarded a gold medal.
Now we all know that a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place, and this is just about what has happened.

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Our intrepid video recordist, Mike Howes, and his lovely assistant Jenna have finished recording the video pieces of the show and the discs with the raw footage are hotfooting it down to London as I type.

They now need to be encoded for use on the website, but hopefully that will all be sorted in time for them to go live on the website tomorrow

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 After his disappointment earlier in the summer when thieves broke into his Somerset nursery and callously stole 17 show plants, John Trott of Mendip Bonsai has bounced back.  Some might say the experience has left him a bit affected. I found him this morning more interested in an innocent little slug meandering over his display cloth than his gold medal. Considering he got a silver gilt at Hampton Court this was surprising.

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It's been a funny morning here at Tatton Park Flower Show. After yesterday's disappointment of not meeting Robbie Williams despite the assurances of Online Editor Geoff Hodge that he'd be at the show, I found him (Geoff Hodge not Robbie!) about to do a live broadcast on Radio 87.7 Tatton FM.
He was obviously feeling guilty because he asked for a special Robbie request to be played on the radio this morning. However I later discovered that it wasn't his idea. His kind assistant Online Editor Michelle Urquhart has suggested it to him and he'd claimed it as his own. And there was me thinking he was trying to make amends.

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