Thursday 5th April, 2012
Today I chucked out a load more ‘help me please’ emails and made many many more calls, and I got more and more disheartened. I read some blogs by designers preparing for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, all of which sound so exciting! A trip to Italy to source the perfect tree. Except the blog post was dated February. And there was no way I was going to Italy…
What was I thinking? There is no way I can do this. Absolutely no way. I’ve got no one to build the garden, no plants, no sponsors, no experience. I decided that it was just too much. I love a challenge, but I definitely don’t want to make an enormous fool of myself. Decision made.
But in the afternoon my tutor from ten years ago, Richard Sneesby, called me. Richard was my design tutor when I trained in the University of Gloucestershire as a landscape architect and was the recipient of one of my many ‘help me please’ emails. He’s a great designer and has done a number of show gardens. Richard spent half an hour giving me fantastic advice: He reminded me that I wasn’t designing an £80,000 garden, this was low budget and I would need friends and family to help me out. That’s one of the best bits he said. Other great bits are asking neighbouring garden teams if you can borrow a particular tool, or a couple of plants to fill a gap. It was starting to sound fun again. Richard also advised me on keeping it simple, boundaries, planting, publicity. All great advice. Okay, I said, I think I’m going to do it.
More good news! I posted a query on The Landscape and Garden Design Forum group on Linkedin titled “RHS Show Garden – I need someone to build it!” and got a response! Rupert from Keyscape in Pershore said that they would be interested and had experience designing show gardens. I got in touch and we agreed to meet next Tuesday. Exciting!
I’ve been torn between designing (surely the most important bit?) and the practical side (utterly essential). There is no point designing this if it cannot be realised in 10 weeks. Now I need to actually DO THE DESIGN. Watch this space…
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