Fun at Chelsea 2010

It's been far too long since my last post, things are so busy with one thing and another here. Chelsea is now almost a distant memory, but thought I'd pop up some photos of our time down there. We had a complete blast - being inside the showground for the build up was an amazing experience, it was good to see we weren't the only ones that were last minute and a bit disorganised. Here's the first few days:

The perspex screen goes up and the wind filtering barriers are installed and working, these look lovely when they turn slowly via a remote control.

Help! It's raining!

The plants start to go in. It's much harder than we think to make the planting look naturalistic.

And the green roof goes on.

The back screens get their lovely graphics added. Very proud as it's my husband's done the art work for them despite not even knowing what an Alder tree is.

After 9 days on site and many many long days we are done. Huzzah!

Getting to stay late on the Tuesday night for the parties was great fun. Swanned around the other gardens, blagging some nice food & free bubbly.

When we got a chance we had a peek at how everyone else was doing. Watched the folks on the Japanese garden brushing moss with paintbrushes. Now that's dedication.

Favourite time of day was first thing in the morning:

Before this happens:

Anyway, it's back to life up in Edinburgh now, time to catch up with all the design projects that have been going on since I left for the adventure in London. The students have all finished their exams, assessments are all marked and they are off to try & make their own way in the design world. I feel incredibly lucky to have been involved with them and their vision. Now all I need to do is figure out if I'll ever do one of my own...!

SAC Strutt & Parker Chelsea Show Garden

Well, that's the SAC students all packed up and off in their big lorry down to Chelsea to put together their show garden. They've built a lot of the garden in advance up here in Edinburgh, so they are hoping that it keeps things a bit less frantic on site. Here are some of the photos we've been taking of progress over the last few months that follows the Chelsea adventure. First of all the garden itself. It's a 21st century croft which reflects concerns about sustainability & renewable energy whilst adopting contemporary styling. Native plants, a water rill and insect homes provide ideal conditions for birds & insects. Elevated design drawing:

Here's some wood and teeny weeny plants, what can they be turned into...?

     

Within a few months they managed to turn the pile of wood above into a base, frame and the side of a house:

Some beautiful details in the garden is the slate rill and shallow bee/bird bathing pool. Once water is running down it, it'll look really stunning.

There are also yew & willow screens which divide the garden from the highlands beyond. I've never seen Yew wood before, it is a lovely rich colour. The engineering students from Edinburgh university have created a mechanism for making them rotate, which is a sight to behold.

The plants are filling out a treat, but they need constant attention & watering. Trying to get them all to flower & reach their peaks just at the right time has meant a lot of moving plants in and outside.

The students have all worked really hard, especially in the last few weeks where quite a few of them have barely had a day off.

It was a very frantic day yesterday, finishing off some bits & pieces before loading up the truck with the garden and some of the larger trees. 

With pretty limited resources and lots of hard work they have done an amazing job. I'm joining them down there later next week, which I'm super excited about. If any of you find yourselves at the show next week, come by and say hello.

Christian Dior's French Fragrant Garden

Being involved in a show garden at the Chelsea Flower Show,  I was interested to see the ‘Christian Before Dior’ garden. Not only because of my love of all things French but because Ian & I were lucky enough to happen upon the garden that inspired it one day late last summer. We were holidaying on the Normandy/Brittany border and decided to drive up to Granville. Whilst walking along the sea front we noticed a sign for the Christian Dior Museum & Garden at the bottom of these amazing steps. So up we climbed.

We discovered that it was his childhood home, Les Rhumbs, and it was perched on a cliff-side facing out towards the Channel Islands. First we arrived at a raised stone terrace, which has a spectacular view of the sea and Granville.

The wooden seats & pergolas are a pale oyster-grey, and the terrace is surrounded by hawthorn bushes and roses - the pink and grey scheme, was one of Dior's favourite combinations. Nearby is a walled garden which contains a simple rectangular pool. Jasmine, honeysuckle, peony, hydrangea, palms, passion flower and roses are planted and an adjoining wooden pergola, designed by Dior, supports plum trees and more clambering pink roses. 

At the end of the garden, perched on the clifftop, is a rose garden, breathtaking in its position. You reach it along a path covered by a second pale-grey arched pergola, another of Dior's designs, which creaks under a mass of climbing roses.

Huge swaying bamboos are planted near the entrance of the garden and guide you past a maze-like knot garden containing box and hazel hedging planted with a mixture of lilies, camellias, hydrangea, roses, geranium and lots of other colourful and beautifully scented planting.

An amazing house & garden in a stunning location. I'll  look forward to seeing how the Chelsea show garden looks in a few weeks time.

Who thought building in February was a good idea?

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, had hoped to put in an update or two before now, but time has just got the better of me with the spring madness and all it brings. Thought I'd add an update about the build we started in the middle of February - the post from the 18th of Feb has drawings, 3D models and describes the client brief. We've been pretty much finished the landscaping for a few weeks now, we were just waiting for the walls to dry and then get them painted, which should happen in the next few days.

These are photos from the survey, you can see the existing patio is fairly dominant, making the garden feel very wide and shallow. Some sort of dining patio was required, as was a place to dry clothes, but we've cut quite a bit of it away as you can see from the photos below. The design also involved replacing the low planter at the front of the patio with a step which helps link the existing patio with new garden. This was the first week and the guys made amazing progress in that first week - marked out, foundations dug and filled, patio cut away, one planter built and the corner seating area is well on it's way.

 

The weather turned especially bad a few days later and the conditions were terrible - incredibly cold and unpleasant, making wall building almost impossible and the site turned into a boggy muddy mess. And then the snow returned, which looked pretty but pretty much stopped us in our tracks.

 

The next week they boys managed to get the walls, seat and water wall/pool block work all finished. We've included small stainless steel rectangular lights and a steel water blade, which are built into the walls as they go. The deck frame was also built at this time.

A week later the walls were all rendered and the the lawn laid, which is edged with stainless steel, which keeps it crisp and clean.

They have done a great job too with cutting away old patio and re-using some stone for new edges and steps.

The hardwood deck is now down and the seat topped with matching wood. The boards have been left loose so that we can paint the walls when the weather's better and everything's dried off a bit. We've been trying out various Farrow & Ball shades of off white, which all look remarkably similar! This photo was taken about 10 days ago, at least the lawn is getting a good watering! The fences are being painted a very dark shade of purple, which will make a great back drop to the planting, which should be completed in the next few weeks. More pics then - hopefully in nicer weather...

With everything that the weather had to throw at us this was a pretty difficult build, but the contractor and his guys did a great job, as ever. Client seems pretty pleased and looking forward to gardening and sitting in it this summer. I enjoyed the project too - the clients were great, really friendly and enthusiastic. I figured out how to take a fairly dominant feature & make it (hopefully!) feel integrated with the rest of the garden, and learned how to make a wide shallow plot feel a bit deeper, more interesting and usable.

Branklyn Garden - plants and design concepts

With the long dark winter just about drawing to a close, our minds turn to spring time and all the lovely plants that we'll be seeing in the next month or two.  It reminded me of a college visit to Branklyn Garden in Perth when I was a horticulture student. I had no notion of working as a designer then, just knew that I loved plants and wanted a job that allowed me to be near them every day! Looking back at them tonight, once again I'm reminded of the importance of texture, colour, light, repetition, interval, shape & form, scale and rhythm in not just planting but every aspect of garden design. First, here's a great example of how invigorating just using green can be:

And even more visually exciting it can be with just the introduction of a small amount of colour. The difference between the Gunnera and Candelabra Primula highlight size and scale.

This hosta and Birch tree emphasise texture in its simplest form. Beautiful.

Look how the cup/bowl shape of the Gunnera is echoed by those of the himalayan poppy.

I'm a huge fan of the Christopher Lloyd approach to colour and love seeing more vibrant combinations in gardens I visit. In my own garden especially I don't get too worried about following the rules of what is 'good taste' or should work well according to pure colour theory. The best combinations can often be accidental. I'm really into orange & purple at the minute, here's a couple of zingy examples I saw there:

Often the same plant but in different colours work well. These pink and purple Aquilega are lovely together.

And these bright pink & marmalade Candelabra primulas are probably not to everyone's taste, but I think they're great.

Look how the light bounces off these grasses, lovely lovely lovely.

And how well they work in the middle of a bed of pink geraniums.

At Branklyn they also have some beautiful maple trees, the colours of which were so vibrant. The sunlight hitting the green palmatum one from above was amazing, as was the light filtering through the red leaved more dissected one.

Lastly just some flowers I like - their colour, shape and forms are stunning close up.

Go and visit - any time of year is great, but in late May/early June the show of Azaleas and Himalayan Poppies is stunning. http://www.branklyngarden.org.uk/