Friday 20th April, 2012
A trip to Cardiff combining the RHS Show with the visiting of some good friends along the way. In addition to seeing the gardens and taking lots of photographs I was on a mission to talk to some designers and extract as much wisdom from them as I could.
First stop Chris Beardshaw, his garden Urban Oasis was designed in consultation with community workers and landscape architects at Groundwork and in collaboration with the RHS. It was lovely with beautiful planting (see photo above). He’s taking a different garden to every RHS Show this year, blimey! I quizzed Chris about the planting and he gave me some great advice: make sure you’ve planted three to four days before judging so the plants have time to relax; and, if you’ve bought the plants rather than borrowed them, then plant them out of the pots, again they relax more and even grow a little.
Then I met Harry, designer of Naturalistic his first show garden and it won best in show! It was a lovely garden, with stunning curved dry stone walls and delicate planting. His garden was 11m x 7m so just marginally bigger than mine, and it looked quite big! The tone of lilac in the dry stone wall was also in the blossom of the tree just beyond the garden boundary; the perfect borrowed landscape.
I also met the lovely Lucinda from the RHS who I’ve spoken with on the phone and we talked about my finding sponsorship in such a short space of time. I haven’t got long to raise a large amount of money, and there is a compelling argument which says I should postpone this garden and do it next year. I could volunteer to help on a show garden in the meantime and gain some valuable experience. I feel in my bones that this is the sensible option. We’ll see.
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