Gardeners World Live 2024
Garden Designs
I’ve been involved with GWL for decades and this was a really nice way to dip my feet back into the world of show gardens without the pressure of having a sponsor or trying to win medals. Being able to design and build a garden that I simply fancied making felt like a sheer indulgence.
When I’m designing show gardens I tend to invent a client and for this it was an old chef who’d taken on a new garden. So I imagined that one day while cutting back brambles, they discovered five old fruit trees and a little stream and as they were clearing the area they realised that this was actually the nicest part of the garden and a great place to bring the family down to cook and eat together.
The plot measured about 12m x 12m and the design, which was extremely simple, focussed on creating a beautiful, credible space full of atmosphere. Creating a show garden at GWL is not easy as the garden is viewed on three sides and you have find ways to hide away the various working elements. The whole thing was designed as if were part of a larger garden so we put the entrance at one end with brick pathways leading up to a gravelled area and a building for the outdoor kitchen.
Made of wood, which we blackened by burning slightly, the structure was open on one side and had a tin roof. The kitchen, which featured a pizza oven and Big Green Egg ceramic barbeque, looked out over a large wooden dining table and the garden beyond. I built the planting up in layers using trees, shrubs along with lots of edibles and some ornamentals. The trees included five ancient old apple trees that I found at Hilliers, an Amelanchier, Acer campestris and Sea buckthorn. We also created a small orchard area with meadowy long grass supplied by Linden turf.
All the materials we used to build the garden were reclaimed and included blocks of York stone, relics from my 2013 Chelsea Flower Show garden, nice buff self-binding gravel, along with some handmade bricks and terracotta pots from Whichford Pottery which brought some warmth to the design. The wooden decking was also burned to tie in with the building.
One of the best things about designing this garden was that I got to build it with my oldest daughter Abbie and my youngest son Oakley along with a team of people I’ve worked with for a long time. Once it was built, I then spent the whole week entertaining fabulous chefs and having Michelin-starred food cooked for me. No point and getting a bit older and not getting a bit wiser about how you go about things!
