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May 2006
Monday 1st
I make contact with growers in Holland who are not sharing our Bank Holiday but can't contact any British growers about Foxgloves until Tuesday. The rest of the plants in the nursery are looking good and Amanda with her husband Alex, are covering the watering while I chase Foxgloves.
Tuesday 2nd
I contact Notcutts who have often supplied me with plants in the past. I felt very hopeful that they may have some white Foxgloves. Unfortunately it seems that all the Foxgloves in this country being grown outside are late because of our cold spring and so they are looking for some for me abroad. At 3 in the afternoon, Vanessa from Notcutts phones me and tells me she has found some Foxgloves in Holland which have been grown to garden centre standard but they are cream. I think that these may well be ok and ask her if she can get some digital shots of them before they have them shipped. She has found 200 so if they are perfect our worries are over. None of the British growers have any. It would appear that white Foxgloves are the plant of the moment at Chelsea this year and all of those grown under cover have been sold.
Wednesday 3rd
I confirm with Vanessa to ship Foxgloves from Holland unseen. It is a risk, one under the circumstances that we have to take. We spend a lot of time in the nursery moving plants around, ready for shipping. Amanda and I spend much of the day making a shipping itinerary of the plants which we have grown at Longstanton and Sandy and those which Heather has grown at her home in Hertfordshire. The shipping itinerary is extremely complex because we have very little storage space allotted to us on the site. It means bringing plants down in relatively small batches each day and trying to plant up as much as we can so that we have space for the next shipment the next day. I know it is not going to be perfect but we have to start somewhere. Working on the Rock Bank in past years we have been spoilt, as we had a lot of available space. Here on Main Avenue, there is very little space, so it is extremely difficult.
I spend the afternoon with Heather and Kevin who is going to be in charge of our deliveries. Kevin is in his final year at Shuttleworth College and knows his plants, however it will be his first time driving a truck. We go through all the plant species with Kevin and he helps us label them up in the nursery so that he will know where they all are. There are over 60 species here, and they are not all in one place, so we know that he is going to have a difficult time initially just finding the plants that we need.
Thursday 4th
And so we're off. We have to pick up our hire car in the morning and get everything loaded. It's very difficult packing for Chelsea. We need warm weather gear, cold weather gear, formal dress, informal dress, it's not like packing for a holiday where you know it's going to be hot all week. Our people carrier is full to the roof by the time we drive away.
Friday 5th
Day one on site. Amanda and I arrive bright and early in time to have our Health and Safety induction from Kevin who is leading the construction team. Chelsea is now run as a construction site and as such is governed by strict health and safety regulations. We take delivery of our storage boxes, generators, timber, digger, dumper and telehandler. We mark out the site, erect the sheds and put in the ducting for the webcams. The hedge boxes arrive late morning, which will go across the back of the site. We get them into place and have the webcams up and running by the end of the day. No mean achievement!
Saturday 6th
Day two of build. Today is a heavy day. There will be the arrival of the crane on site at 7 this morning. We will be blocking Main Avenue for the next two days as we get in our large trees. The trees have to be handled carefully as, with the sap rising rapidly, the bark will strip off if they are not handled correctly. Tree installation goes well.
Sunday 7th
The tree installation is completed and the green screens are installed behind the hedge. We prepare the site for the installation of Phil's stumpery and David Williams drives up from Wales with his beautiful carving of a sleeping lady.
Monday 8th
The stumpery arrives and is installed without a hitch. I was really worried about this particular part of the build as the tolerances of the installation for such a large structure between the rootballs of the trees is extremely tight and it's always a worry when a piece like this is put into place. It will be in scale with its surroundings. It fits well and sits as if it has been there forever. The lorry driver says he has never had so many stare as he had driving through London with the stumpery on the rear of his trailer.
Tuesday 9th
Brooks flies in this morning from the States to help with planting and we start contouring the woodland and take delivery of our first batch of small plants and trucks. Unfortunately, Anette, who was supposed to be coming from Sweden to help us plant has been taken ill. We hope she will be able to come tomorrow.
Wednesday 10th
With Brooks and Anette on site and our third delivery of plants we start planting the woodland. It's looking beautiful by the end of the day and it's strange that once you start to put the plants in, it actually starts to smell like a woodland.
Thursday 11th
Now that the woodland is in and contoured, we have started to create the pool and the island. More plant deliveries, as well as pond liners, rocks and gravels. We start work on the stream and Phil, working with Barry from Squires, start to construct us the most beautiful babbling brook. I can't wait to set our mossy rocks and the many mossy logs, which Heather has collected, into the stream bed. I think it is going to look beautiful.
We take delivery of the first of our bluebells and primroses. I think these two species are some of the most difficult to have in flower for the Chelsea Flower Show as normally they finish flowering well before the show starts. I actually thought that my Primroses were blind, but just before we left we saw the first buds starting to appear and now it looks as if they will be perfect for the show. Similarly, bluebells are notoriously difficult to grow, but these are the best I have ever managed to produce.
Following a phone call with Jekka McVicar, who is doing the Malvern show, she has managed to find us 26 white Foxgloves from exhibitors there. Matt delivers them this morning - some of the them are perfect, one or two are starting to go over, but any Foxglove is better than no Foxglove, especially when they're white!
Friday 12th
We have finished off the island construction today, ready for the arrival of the green lady. Two disasters today. The green lady arrives without hitch from her home in Heather's garden in Hertfordshire and is set on the island awaiting the arrival of Peter Hill tomorrow. She is unloaded without a hitch. As we all stand back to admire her, the armature holding her torso upright folds and she topples forward into the pool. Utter horror as we watch her fold! But on getting her back into the upright position, we find that she has just a sprained wrist and a few pieces of mirror missing from her face. I am sure that Peter Hill will repair her when he comes tomorrow. Almost worse than this is the arrival of my Foxgloves from Notcutts, which are unfortunately totally unsuitable. They have no flower buds and due to a misunderstanding are the wrong species! A lesson to be learnt here. It is not good to take plants for Chelsea unseen - something I will never do again.
Saturday 13th
Peter Hill arrives and works on the green lady for the day, repairing the damage seamlessly, putting her together and setting her into place. Such a large piece is always something of a worry as, once again, it is very difficult to imagine the scale, even though she looked perfectly well in her setting on the plan. It takes some time to get her face to everyone's satisfaction and there will be a lot of problems building up the land to support her arm and hair as there isn't a lot of room between the end of the island and her shoulder. We have to come up nearly one and a half metres in a very short space, and then plant it. This is going to be very tricky. We have gone as far as we can with the woodland planting, as other plants needed for its completion will not arrive until next Wednesday.
Sunday 14th
We start planting in the water behind the island while the guys are working the pool, electrics, the irrigation system, the lighting and all the other bits and bobs that go to make a showgarden, but are rarely seen. We put the mossy rocks and logs into the stream and put up the bird boxes and bat boxes on the trees. They look very much at home in this lovely setting. Colin arrives to join the team. He will be helping to plant the meadow and the big flower beds at the front of the garden. The guys spend a lot of time washing pebbles and rocks that are going into the pond in an effort to reduce the dust. It takes them a long time to do this and our planting around the edges does not make their life any easier, as we always make such a mess! Some of the large climbers are put onto the stumpery, and we finish planting the back face of the island.
Monday 15th
We continue to take plant deliveries every day and Kevin is doing a sterling job, getting up at half past five every day to load plants and get them down to Chelsea before the traffic. He is being helped by a friend of ours, Kristien Somerfield, who has been helping Amanda's husband keeping plants watered in the nursery, loading trolleys, helping with deliveries. There is an amazing amount of people in the background behind every one of these gardens, all of whom play a vital role in its success.
Tuesday 16th
The weather is being very kind to us. It has been cool and a little damp, which makes our job much simpler, looking after and tending the plants and garden. However, space for plants is still a major issue and every time we bring plants down we have to spend an enormous amount of time moving stuff around to make room for new ones coming in. Heather is unhappy with the planting on the back face of the island, so we decide to dismember it and start again. It's a very difficult piece of planting, because not only do we have to get the plant structure correct, but we have to use big plants to support the steep face of the island as it rises to meet the green lady. It takes until seven in the evening but eventually it is done to everyone's satisfaction. Apart from the chamomile planting, the island is now finished and looks lovely. Tomorrow we have more woodland plants coming in so we can finish that too.
Chris Beardshaw, who is doing a garden on the Rock Bank, has found me some white foxgloves. He is going to deliver them to me tomorrow. They are just like the ones he has, which are absolutely perfect. If they are suitable, we will able to slip them into the areas that we have deliberately left unplanted - in the hope that some will arrive from somewhere. It looks as if our prayers have been answered ... but I won't tempt fate until I see them tomorrow!
Friday 19th
We finish the woodland planting today. The lilies of the valley, bluebells and sweet woodruff make it seem like a real woodland when you walk up the path. The cool wet weather is perfect for our plantings, which would frazzle if it were hot and dry. The rain has also damped down the dust and the seed heads from the plane trees, which were causing us immense discomfort yesterday. Everyone had sore eyes, sore throats and a hacking cough by the time we got home last night, so the rain has been a blessing. People seem to think that because the woodland is finished the garden is finished, but of course the grassland is the most difficult of all the plantings we undertake. Our grassland is planted in tiny pieces, none of them larger than my hand with the herbs inserted between small pieces of turf. This planting is always my biggest worry but by the end of the day the herb rich bank looks absolutely beautiful with the pale green seed heads of the cowlips and the beautiful silky heads of the basque flowers showing above the daisies.
Saturday 20th
Sue Hill arrives this morning to carry out a little surgery on our green lady. Because it has been so wet, pieces of her which are not exposed to the wind have gone a little brown. Sue Hill is amazingly clever at patching in small pieces of turf into the areas in need of restoration and she has put more camomile in the lady, which smells beautiful. The green lady has been causing an immense amount of publicity and last night there was a big picture of her in the Evening Standard and today we are in the Telegraph, the Express, the Mail and even have one line the Financial Times! Today we manage to finish the big herb bed and all the meadow planting, all we have left to do now is the camomile lawn in front of the green lady and the pathways. We have to leave a pathway clear to the stumpery in order to finish it off with its hop vines and lavender strewn on the floor.
Sunday 21st
Finished! The woodland path has been strewn with its leaf mould and leaves. The meadow paths have been planted and gently walked upon by Emma with her bare feet. She is the lightest of the crew, but the paths do need to be trod up to show they are walked on. It has been freezing cold today and raining gently, so walking around in your bare feet isn't the nicest of jobs, but Emma always does everything with a good heart. I've had the most amazing support from all the team this year, who have been brilliant, and Heather's eye for detail has certainly added to the perfection of the whole design. People keep coming up to me and saying nice things about the garden, which is always lovely at the end of two and a half weeks of exhausting work. Lots of people are saying, 'But it looks as if it has been there forever', which, of course, is the ultimate compliment when you are trying to create a bluebell wood or meadow. 'Exquisite planting', 'A triumph of wit and horticulture', are just some of the comments I have heard today.
And so we wait. Tomorrow is judging day and on Tuesday morning we'll know what the judges think of our efforts of the last 12 months. Let's hope that they like it as much as the press and public.
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