Juggling act

18th March 08

I’m absolutely rushed off my feet at the moment with three show gardens to juggle. Other than BBC Gardeners’ World Live, I’m also involved with gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show in May and the Hampton Court Flower Show in July, so things have been busy.

The build up for Chelsea is close now. I’ve been working on it for months, but it suddenly all seems to have come around very quickly.

As Chelsea is the first of the three shows, I’ll be focusing my attention on it for the next few weeks, but it certainly doesn’t mean I can forget all my other work.

I had a meeting about the garden I’m designing for Hampton Court the other week, which was great as things are really starting to come together now.

We’re going to have a ‘green wall’ in the garden, which will be full of little pockets to allow planting all the way up, creating the effect of a cascade of plants. It should look really effective and will give the garden a lovely unique edge.

I’ve also been meeting contractors for the Design Challenge garden. I’ve worked with most of them before and know that they will do a lot of the work for us, which is great. I’m going to be largely focusing on sorting out the planting for the show. It will mean visiting loads of different nurseries, but I can tie it in with getting plants for Chelsea and Hampton Court as well, so I can kill three birds with one stone.

Working on the three shows is great fun but has meant that I’ve been absolutely rushed off my feet for the last few weeks. In fact, I’ve not had a proper weekend off since before Christmas!

I know from experience that things certainly aren’t going to get any less hectic over the summer, so I’m going to try and fit in a short break before the build up to Chelsea kicks in – I’ll need it to gather my energy. I’m also planning a proper holiday to somewhere hot and sunny once all the shows are done and dusted, but there’s a lot of work to do before I can think about that.