The Road to Stardom (Part 3)

The lawn was really difficult to get right, I tried an oval then 2 circles joined together, but it still didn't look right. I took the hosepipe to it, and tried different designs, in the end the fish type shape came together, well I think it did as it was nearly dark by then.

I then got the children to try out the proportions of the garden to see how they worked. I laid out the stepping-stones to work out how many of these I would need, and the rough path they would take. Took several photos to take with us in order to remember what went where.
Next we had to work out how to make the pergola, check it could be built to my design, & it would be stable enough, and then work out how long it would take to put together. Luckily David has a very mathematical brain and could work out all the angles needed to cut the wood to make a near curve. All the sleepers and wood were cut to length, and then the building started in our garden at home, and David’s sister - Fred Dibnah - who's mentioned elsewhere....came along to do some welding of the reinforcing rods to hold the frame together.

Meanwhile as well as building the pergola, I was still putting the design on paper, putting a planting & long term maintanance plan together, and various other bits and pieces to post to the BBC for their approval and info.

We then had to go in search of all the plants, wood, gravel, pots and accessories needed to finish the garden. This was extreme fun with 8 children in the summer holidays.....luckily some are old enough to fend for themselves (well they are supposed to be..)
Wood we managed to get quite locally, new timber sleepers for only £20 each, and various other thicknesses for reasonable rates. I think the pergola cost about £160.00 in total.
The reinforcing steel mesh was really cheap @ £11 a sheet from Jewsons. We also found some lovely red gravel, only to find it had been sent to them in error, but they did say we could have it......They have free delivery on orders of £100, so asked if we could have it delivered to Birmingham, and they obliged (more about this later).
Plants came from numerous garden centres in S Wales and Bristol, but try finding good plants at the end of August - it was a nightmare. Plants had been cut back, shade plants had had too much sun and were really suffering, trying to find a couple of dahlias in red proved so difficult. (We found some brilliant ones on the way back at a GS that didn't look open on the way up...)Scruffy definitely has advantages.

We spent the 2 weeks eating, sleeping and doing in preparation for the build. I'd asked David to build some benches to fit into the pergola, very cheap but quite a lot of work, they looked really good when finished. He also carved the statue with a chainsaw. It has been modified a lot, as initially it was supposed to be a broad bean, but it turned out too rude, so he carved a hole through it, but that just looked even ruder, in the end we got a really unique statue.
We managed to get some lovely big pots that matched the gravel on buy one get one free.

Everything was going smoothly until we phoned up Jewsons to give them the delivery address. The manager there said that they couldn't deliver the gravel, we argued saying they'd said yes even when we queried it etc etc....but no they wouldn't change their mind. We couldn't take it ourselves and it was a local Herefordshire stone so wasn't available elsewhere.......
In desperation I emailed head office in the hope that they might have a delivery system within Jewsons that might be able to load it up to the central delivery hub, and transfer it that way, after all it was only 2 ton of gravel. I had a quick email saying they didn't have the facilities to transfer and that I shouldn't have been told they would deliver. I sent back the full force of the BBC....well mentioned that the whole design was dependant on this gravel (which it was really).From then on they bent over backwards to help get the gravel up to B'ham, even hiring a lorry to take it to the site on the Thursday, so we'd like to thank them very much.

The Road to Failure of the Year 2005 (part 2)

Beginning of August came and went, thought I hadn't got through and would receive a letter in post to confirm that. Got back in one day, one of the children said some funny women had phoned and would call back later...Got them to listen to a previous message on the answerphone and sure enough it was Rosemary Edwards, so waited nervously. Of course general emergency, the children always manage something, so ended up missing the call, and David taking it.

Rosemary congratulated me on getting through to the final, gave details of the next stage - brief design details, size of plot, what I was supposed to be doing, budget etc etc and said all info would be special delivered by the weekend. Needless to say when I got back I had loads of questions but David didn't have any answers, the pack was not received till the Monday, less than 3 weeks to get everything ready. It included some photos of the plot, and a short video - inspiring or what ????

My "clients" had a plot 12mx4m, budget £1,200. They like big potted plants, roses, lawn, pond/water feature, gravel, decking, low maintenance. They are an easy going couple who like entertaining and don't want a compost heap, basically that's all I got to know.
I did several concept drawings to try and think of something a bit different than the norm, but would still fit in a surburban garden, and was possible in 3 1/2 days.

I decided the garden needed breaking up so there was a sense of adventure so decided on a screen. I didn't want a formal look so went for curves, from there the pergola developed, a curved one is quite unusual I think. I had to then make it into a sunken area because of planning permission, everything has to be under 2m from dampcourse. I needed an entertainment area, which I decided consisted of the curved pergola and an area of gravel, which would also be home to several large potted plants - (as requested), this took up 1/3 of the garden.

The back area I wanted to be lush as a contrast to the gravel, the "client" had requested a lawn, having read that decided that as they were happy to cut the lawn weekly, they would be happy to tidy up in the winter if I put perennials in. I decided on the red and black colour scheme on the sunny side, as I feel this is quite a stunning combination, and my border at home always gets lots of positive comments. The other side is always in the shade, so felt a bog area + woodland planting would give the lush planting I required when mature.

I then had to put that on paper........the gravel area, pergola and planting came quite quickly, the lawn gave me some problems. I decided to mark out the area in my own garden to get the proportions right, and just to get a feel of the size of the plot.

The Road to Failure of the Year 2005 (part 1)

Some time in April 2005, I decided to enter BBC Gardener of the Year 2005. I'd tried the year before but didn't even receive an entry form, something to do with the huge amount of spam they get..they now have a downloadable form.
Anyway duly found 6 photos of the garden, filled in the forms and sent them off. No receipt so forgot about them, didn't even know if they'd arrived, closing date 7th July.

Meanwhile had also entered Daily Mail Garden of the Year, and had been shortlisted along with 11 others (out of approx 2,000) and was busy getting garden ready for that.

7th July passed so thought obviously didn't feature at all. 9th July message from producer of GOTY, Rosemary Edwards asking me to phone back. My hands were shaking but she sounded really nice - although she was eating a mouthful of salad sandwich - so was a bit unclear. Any way quick discussion to say I had been shortlisted along with 20 others(out of many ,000's) , could they come and visit and could I just answer a few questions.....(15 minutes before 8 children come charging in from school !!)
Absolutly gobsmaked would be an understatement. 1st question - what is double digging, now I know the answer and kept fumbling on about digging etc, and I don't know if I got it right, because through every question she didn't say yes or no, so thinking I hadn't answered correctly or she needed more information I kept rabbiting on. Anyway finally got to the end, arranged a day for her and the horticultural advisor to visit and rang off.....

Opened the garden for the 1st time for NGS, had over 200 visitors on one of the hottest days of the year. Will chose cooler day next year.

Meanwhile the judges from the Daily Mail were due on 25th July so didn't get much time to relax as I was busy getting the garden ready for them. They turned out to be really nice, a guy from the paper and Prof David Stevens an emminent garden designer, 12 Chelsea golds no less.
Couple of days later Rosemary and Laura (horticultural advisor & later evil question setter) arrived with small video camera in hand. Had a look round garden, met some of children and took lots of film, took small clip of me saying " My name is....etc.etc" to check that they could actually film us talking with out us fainting I suppose. Said they'd be in touch at the beginning of August.
Meanwhile back at the ranch....