Posts Tagged ‘English Garden Joinery’

May has been a wonderful month for me and I’m sure you can easily guess that the Chelsea Flower Show for me has been the highlight of the year so far.  Not only did I have the opportunity to design the stand with English Garden Joinery this year, but we were also awarded with a Certificate of Merit.  My huge apologies go out to you regular readers for mentioning it again. I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough about the subject by now (!) however if you did miss out, you may wish to read the blog post I wrote about it last week.

We have had some great coverage too and my thanks go out to Rona Wheeldon and Fiona Humberstone who featured us on their blogs.  Our stand and award was also covered by online magazine The Guildford Dragon, The Guildford Magazine (online version will be published on 7th June)and The Surrey Advertiser on Friday 1st June.

The other significant event in May was my 40th birthday and I have been so busy with work over the past few weeks that it was a real treat to go to Brighton for the day with my gorgeous man.  The weather was a bit dull and dreary but we had a wonderful lunch at The Ginger Pig.  I thought I’d hate being 40, but I feel good and excited about what the next decade is going to bring.

Other highlights for me this month were the preview evening at the new Garden Shop at Petersham nurseries and the brilliant garden photography course I went to at Wakehurst Place with Clive Nichols.

This month I have seen 3 new clients, spent the day working with a client in Molesey who commissioned me for one of my Garden Designer in your Home sessions, and I presented two concept designs to existing clients which I am now drawing up with specifications.

On the networking front, my involvement with Chelsea meant that I was only able to attend one of my meetings this month.  The speaker was the brilliant Vanessa Corrigan of the Image Studio who spoke to us about the importance of creating the right first impression.

Sponsored by Homebase, the Teenage Cancer Trust garden, designed by Joe Swift, was another of my favourite Main Avenue show gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show this year.  The garden was inspired by the power that plants and natural forms have on urban and suburban environments.  It was designed as a dry garden to give consideration to water sources and sustainability issues. Read more

It was the last day of the Chelsea Flower Show on Saturday and another hot and tiring day, but somehow knowing that it was our last gave us an extra burst of energy and by the time the show finished at 5.30pm we really did feel quite sad to be dismantling the stand.  It was a really brilliant week and we got such amazing feedback about the design and the craftmanship of the products that English Garden Joinery were showcasing – we even had someone interested in buying the whole stand! Read more

As you know, I have been at the Cheslea Flower Show almost every day this week helping to man the English Garden Joinery stand.  In some ways this has been brilliant because I’ve been able to see different parts of the show on each of the days, but what it has meant is that time has been a bit of a luxury and I haven’t had the chance to write any blog posts about it. Read more

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… 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

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

I made a site visit to my project in Sutton yesterday and it’s really starting to take shape now… Read more

As you know, I’ve just spent the last 6 days planting up the project near Woking.  It’s all coming together now and I’ll be meeting with the client and landscaper later this week to sign everything off.  When I was designing the garden, one of the considerations was an area near the garden shed as it could been seen from the lounge window and was really unattractive… Read more