I was starting to worry tat it was going to be a cold Chelsea and that my Turkey inspired planting would look kind of appropriate in the glum. But today the sun shone and it's forecasted to stay. Hooray! moral is boosted

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At last, the tree debacle is resolved in the form of Quercus frainetto. I am still going to use Q. cerris but I sourced a large Q. frainetto that can hold its own beside my monster Parrotia. It means I've gone a bit off piste as regards the brief, but frainetto is an oak that is found growing readily in Turkey. So the trees are sorted and now we can concentrate on getting our living walls in show condition. Unfortunately, the Selaginella (moss) still thinks its winter and refuses to grow.

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This year has been an odd year climatically speaking. I picked out my Quercus cerris 10 months ago for being a perfect Chelsea standard tree. It has been in the UK for 2 years and completely acclimatised. Yet, when it was delivered, I realised that it was very late coming into leaf. The odd thing being, that cerris always comes into leaf before Q. palustris, yet palustris is already quite leafed up. So, much to my supplier's annoyance, I rejected it and asked for another. The next one will also not make the grade, so I drove up to the nursery this morning and spent some time searching for the best one. The jury's still out, but one thing is for sure: we are not having cerris at Chelsea this year, and time is running out for an alternative that sticks to the brief.

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Yesterday was the last chance to visit all my plants before the final deadline. Early polls indicated that all three main plant group parties would be capable of winning on the big day. The first group, grasses, were expected to do much better after a slow start, owing to recent warm weather and a rise in popularity having featured in Garden’s Illustrated. However, they have performed rather disappointingly, especially, main grass: Anemanthele lessoniana, and I have recommended a substitute of Deschampsia cespitosa to take effect immediately. The main two contenders, woody plants and perennials both have performed well, with a possible slight drop in woody as the Lagerstroemia indica has still not come into leaf and I am starting to question its reliability. At this juncture, it would not be advisable to make drastic changes and so I have resorted to prayer. Perennials have performed better in some areas particularly Echium, Beschorneria and Iris all of which are spot on. But the big surprise has been in amongst the minority parties i.e. bulbs. I took a punt on some out of season plants, notoriously difficult to grow for the big day. But I am reliably informed that Camassia, Fritillaria and Tulipa have done well with an outside chance of Lilium squeezing in on the day. Altogether a very satisfying result.

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This is the last weekend before I set off to Chelsea for the build up. It's time to get one's affairs in order: pay parking fine, net out the leeches in the natural swimming pool (they freak the children out) and shear the sheep. Even though it's still not summer, I thought it best to get them done now as it may get hot in my absence (even though Chelsea build up is notorious for bad weather). We have Shetland sheep as they are small and tough. Their primary purpose is for wildflower management with the added bonus of filling the freezer. The Shetland's fleece is quite easy to shear and we do them with hand clippers, however, the Shetland breed is very wild and they will wriggle terribly making the task arduous. They are all shorn now (it immediately started hailing) and they are shivering in the lee of the haha. I cannot move for stiffness; you try clamping a wild ewe between your legs whilst you clip away with hand shears, bent double for a whole day. Now, about those leeches....

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It is predicted to be cold this weekend and we have three Lagerstroemia indica that are only just coming into leaf. I deliberately left them in Italy over winter thinking it would be warmer there, but, it turns out, they've had a hideous winter. Hence leafless shrubs arriving in the UK. David Howard of Howard Nurseries came to the rescue and very kindly let me put them in the Chelsea polytunnel. Howard Nurseries is on of the largest wholesale perennial nurseries in the country and shrubs are seldom seen there; particularly 3 metre tall ones in 500 litre pots. Yet Gavin and his staff wrestled them into the nice warm tunnel for the weekend. I hope it's worth all the effort

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I alluded to my sculpture yesterday in relation to my choice of tree: Parrotia persica. I feel elaboration necessary, if only to re-assure myself that I am doing the right thing (paranoia creeping in). Cunégonde (love interest in the garden theme book Candide) has always intrigued me as to how she develops from shy coquettish girl via harlot-ish behaviour into haughty, capricious woman and I wanted to try and capture this development in the form of sculpture. Enter master sculptors: CJ Munn and Andre Masters (mastersandmunn.co.uk) who cast our gorgeous model in copper, using nine pre-determined poses that I felt depicted the character transformation. And it was for Cunégonde's harlot phase that I chose the tree; the poses are sensuously writhing with lots of outstretched arms and legs in a 'take me I'm yours' kind of way. Take a look at the Parrotia persica image I've posted in the My Photos page of this blog and you'll see what I mean: there are more writhing arms and legs than in a game of naked Twister

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I've just got back from visiting my two trees for the show. The search for these two has taken about 10 months, two trips abroad and many miles. I wanted the trees to regionally validate my garden, but link harmoniously to the theme. The fruits of my search are: Quercus cerris - The Turkey Oak, well, you can't get more regionally accurate than that - the garden is Turkish themed i.e. the farm in which Candide finally finds fulfilment was in Turkey - or Constantinople. The tree is majestic and I was able to find one of a stature that can compete with the massive London Planes that backdrop Main Avenue. Secondly, Parrotia persica which is not a million miles from the garden's theme of Candide. But more importantly, check out the limbs on this beauty; its limbs snake and intertwine in an almost orgiastic manner - which is just what I want as it links with my leggy sculptures perfectly. Even the bark is sensuously smooth, I defy anyone not to want feel it, but keep your hand of my sculpture, else I'll throw a bucket of cold water on you.

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Today we spent the whole day wading in the pond with rolled up trousers, planting up all the marginals. At first, the water seemed quite pleasant, but as the day wore on, so the chill set in and morale started to dip amongst my wonderful volunteer planters. Saggy trouser legs and other bits of clothing became wet, further exacerbated by the onset of rain at 6.00pm. I decided to call it a day before my volunteers became mutinous. As I made my way back to Sloane St tube, the phone rang with my hosts (who are bravely putting me up for the Chelsea duration) asking me to pop into their favourite Chinese restaurant for a bite to eat. I looked like an exceptionally muddy drowned rat and tried to back out due to my appearance but was persuaded otherwise on the grounds of needing a decent meal. The restaurant was rather smart and upon entry was reminded of that wonderful missing-the-dart-board-in-the-Slaughtered-Lamb-scene from An American Werewolf in London. Except this time it was chopsticks

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Yesterday I had to go down to Wisley to do the additional BBC Chelsea coverage for the Red Button option (which I'm not completely au fait with, but will get my 15 year old son to explain to me). What we had to do is pretend to be in our show garden at Chelsea and give a tour as though we were actually there....in the present tense. This was fatal as I kept saying things like: "beside the sculpture will be Sarracenia flava" instead of "and here are the Sarracenia flava beside the sculpture". This may sound easy to you but imagine sitting in the middle of Wisley gardens with people milling around and a giant tin foil sun reflector shining in your face and you're trying not to squint. Then you would find that difficult...or you will find that difficult...or you are finding that difficult...I'm no longer sure anymore

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Much to the delight of the staff, we spent this morning turfing 50 square metres of the Chelsea-dedicated polytunnel at Howard Nurseries. In actual fact it's wildflower turf from Coronet Turf Ltd that we need to push on a bit in time for Chelsea. I am hoping for a good show of ragged robin that is evidently abundant in the turf. We rolled out a sheet of black plastic and raked out about 10mm of compost for the turf to root into. However, I'm a little concerned about how we are going to get it to Chelsea as we will not be able to roll it back up again - but I'm sure we'll think of something.

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In the garden we are going to have a female sculpture who represents an ideal of humanity/ guardian of the environment. She will be sitting overlooking our wave sculpture; the idea being that she is keeping watch over our tumultuous world ready to cope and adapt to any waves of change. Yesterday, I met the highly talented artist Nikki Taylor who is going to sculpt our figure using copper mesh (www.nikkitaylorsculpture.com). I also met her beautiful model Connie who will be immortalised in the form of sculpture. After much positioning, prodding and pushing limbs around, we found the perfect pose which we liked to call relaxed poised. It's funny though, the sculpture started life as the 'Guardian of the Environment' and then became the 'Ideal of Humanity'. She's now called Connie

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Just got a call from a nursery saying that they will pot up my stuff for next week. I (being concerned that there's only 7 weeks to go) asked whether it would be ready for Chelsea and they replied that it would be touch and go!!!!! Why the hell didn't they discuss this with me before? The order went in before Christmas So it's back to calling every nursery up to see what they have in large sizes

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Back in 2000 I spent 8 weeks in SE USA knee deep in bogs studying the carnivorous plant's dependency in fire. The short and long of it is that we should be setting fire to these American woodlands on a regular basis. The tree species in that area have evolved to cope with fire, in fact Pinus serotina needs fire to open its cones and release the seed. If burnt regularly, debris would not build up and create a 'hot' devastating fire. Instead we would have 'cool' quick non-damaging fires. The bogs within these forests would be kept clear of competitive growth and the carnivorous plants would thrive. But no, the US Forestry Service don't see it like that: when I mentioned the perfect solution it was met with resistance and the threat of arrest. No they much prefer the costly non-eco approach of keeping the undergrowth down with the avid use of herbicides. As a result many populations of Venus fly-trap, Sarracenia sp. Drosera sp. are so small they are not genetically diverse enough to outbreed and survive. So this Chelsea Flower Show is dedicated to the plight of the carnivorous plant and will highlight its vulnerability as a direct result of US Forestry Service's complete ignorance to understand the serious threat they are causing to wildlife in the forests of SE USA.

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