It’s Press Day at Chelsea Flower Show today and it’s very exciting not only to be there before the show opens to the public, but also to be part of the show.  I spent a few hours yesterday with English Garden Joinery at the showground, putting the final touches to their show stand and I am delighted to be able to share the finished stand with you…

The star of the show has to be the rocking lounger that they are launching – it’s not only beautiful and elegant but it’s really comfortable and I think it will attract a lot of interest throughout the week.

The plants coming out of the deck are set into rings.  We have used Hachonekloa macra ‘Aureola’, an ornamental grass which forms hummocks of vivid yellow and green striped foliage.

The other main feature of the show stand is this corner bench which, although it looks quite conventional, you’ll notice doesn’t have a leg in the middle corner.

The planters are free standing and can made to any dimensions.  We chose box balls because they are both sculptural and contemporary without detracting from the timber elements of the stand.

The stepping stones are constructed with sawn Jura Limestone as we felt that this would contrast well with the decking whilst enhancing the overall look and feel of the stand.  We really wanted it to look and feel like a garden and I think we have achieved this, we’ve certainly had some great feedback from the other exhibitors at the show.

If you’ll be visiting the show this week, do come along to the stand and say hello, we’d love to see you.  We’re at stand no. SRW4 in Raneleigh Gardens.

It’s been a while since my front garden was finished and I know the rain has been really miserable over the past few weeks, but it has kept my new plants happy and they’re already putting on some growth. Read more

Last week Rona Wheeldon and I went along to the preview evening at The Garden Shop at Petersham Nurseries.  The Garden Shop is the new retail space that is designed exclusively for gardeners and is full of gorgeous plants and stylish garden accessories.  We arrived a little early so that we had chance to take some photographs – a brilliant place to hone the skills we’d learned with Clive Nichols a week or so ago! Read more

As you know, a few weeks ago, Rob Horton of English Garden Joinery asked me if I would like to design their RHS Chelsea Flower Show stand this year and it didn’t really take me very long to give them an answer…well, a couple of seconds maybe! Read more

If you’re a regular reader of my blog then you’ll know that I carried out the planting at my Sutton project a few weeks ago.  It was a long old day as I was on site at 7.30am and didn’t finish until gone 7pm by which time it was not only too dark to take pictures, but all I wanted to do was to get home and have a hot bath. Read more

On Saturday I attended Clive Nichols’ garden photography workshop at Wakehurst Place with my good friend Rona Wheeldon.  Clive is a world renowned garden photographer so we knew we were in for a great day and I think I speak for us both when I say that it exceeded our expectations. Read more

This month, my Garden Flowers blog post, which I write with Rona Wheeldon of Flowerona features one of our favourite flowers, the peony, whose Latin name is Paeonia. Read more

Well it’s been a challenging month in the garden world with most of the water companies in the South East imposing hosepipe bans at the beginning of April but that’s another story for another time and, fortunately, because my Sutton client had a drip-feed irrigation system installed, we were still able to plant up the garden.  I didn’t finish the planting until 8.30pm so it was too dark to take photos, but I am going back later this week to take pictures and will of course share them with you then.  Ironically of course the irrigation system hasn’t really been needed yet! Read more

Last weekend I ran my second Design Your Own Garden workshop at MakeMe Workshops in the Medicine Garden in Cobham.  This time I remembered to take my camera with me so I thought I’d share the pictures with you and tell you a bit about the workshop. Read more

Last Friday I visited Cardiff Flower Show for the first time with my friend Rona Wheeldon of Flowerona. The first thing that struck us was how friendly everyone was there – it had a local show feel to it and as well as the show gardens, floral marquee and show exhibitors that you see at all the RHS shows, there was also a craft market. Read more