We don’t start in earnest at Chelsea until tomorrow but the RHS have kindly allowed the Main Garden builders to start today by setting out the gardens. This makes a huge difference because when the teams turn up tomorrow, both our gardens will be marked out and they can get cracking with the excavation works. One of the most impressive sights is how they construct the Main Tent. It’s lifted on hydraulic motors and all happens in quite a short time.

It’s difficult to believe that we only have 19 days to go and that during that time we need to turn a flat piece of ground into two Show Gardens. But it’s the same for everyone. Our main problem at the moment is that the recent warm weather has really forced on our plants so we have been desperately trying to slow them down in our shade tunnels – with limited success.

If you havn’t watched any of the videos that Joe, Cleve and James have produced, I strongly suggest you go onto You Tube and watch them. The link below shows the three of them at the Crocus nursery messing about in the style of Morecambe and Wise.

Their webiste says ’3 Men Went 2 Mow are garden designers, Joe Swift, Cleve West and James Alexander-Sinclair. Joe is the loud one, James is the posh one in a hat and Cleve is the smouldering one with the RHS Gold Medals. None of them own a dog named ‘Spot’.

http://www.3menwent2mow.com/3MenWent2Mow/Welcome.html

It’s always quite difficult for designers to imagine what the trees might look like at Chelsea when you are ‘tagging’ them in a cold field in Germany or Belgium. The problem this gives us is that when it comes to building the garden at the Chelsea Flower Show itself, the worst possible outcome is for us to plant the trees, for the designer to then change his mind and ask us to move them. It’s quite dispiriting to do any work twice but the most important factor is that it costs us valuable time. To avoid this, last week we set out the entire garden down at the Crocus nursery and positioned each tree in the correct place. Luciano could then look at each tree and decide if he was happy with it. All 12 trees were reviewed and every one numbered and the front marked so that we know exactly which tree to plant where.

As you will have worked out by now, we don’t like surprises at Chelsea so we try and do as much work in advance before starting on site. This time it was the water spouts that we wanted to experiment with. It may sound strange but the height and volume of water going through a spout has a significant impact on splash and especially sound. It can vary between calm and placid on the one hand and noisy and aggressive on another. The video shows Cleve and Bamber Wallis experimenting with different flow rates and heights.

David and Mark have been working this week on preparing the dry stone walls for the Telegraph garden at Chelsea. Over the years we have found that any kind of dry stone walling can be very slow to build (especially if you want to do it properly). So this year we have developed the idea that we build most of the walls before the show and then transport them to the site. We have constructed frames for each wall and David has been been building them at our Nursery. There are 14 of them in all and he should have finished them by tomorrow. The great thing about doing it this way is that it should save us a lot of time at the Show itself.

Luciano recently visited Kengo Kuma’s offices to see progress on the building of the pavilion for the Laurent-Perrier garden. The building was complete by the time that Luciano got to Japan and so he was able to get a feel for how the structure will fit within the garden. It is looking fantastic and is now making its way by sea over the the Crocus offices in Windlesham.

Dr Phil and Jim asked us to have a go at raising some rare and endangered species of seeds from the Melborne Botanic Garden seed bank. I agreed and said I would have a go. The seeds actually arrived by special courrier and as a result of a lot of paperwork from Australia. I had to sign a declaration that I would not sell the resultant plants commercially.
We took great care to sow the seeds according to the instructions the botanic garden sent with them, some needed soaking in boiling water and some needed a smoke treatment to mimc the bush fires.
There were 10 packets in all. 9 of the 10 I had never heard of before so it was all very exciting!

Even more exciting was the day the first seeds started to germinate. After about 2 months we had 6 pots with 6 different species in them . Eucalyptus perinniana. rhadogia parrabolica, Swainsonia greyana, Aacia caerulescens, and Zygophyllum apiculataum and Leptorynchus squamjtus ssp squamtus. The rest did not ever germinate – at all.
We lloked after these precious seedlings carefully and daily we opened the propagator lid for ventilation. They were in our kitchen which was a warm room and near the Aga. Eventually we left the lid off alogether so the seedlings would have more light.
A few days later, we came home for lunch, went into the kitchen and found our tabby cat called Smellycat (because as a kitten he made bad smells in his poo-box!) munching away in the propagator. Horror struck we rushed over and pulled him off. He ran off with seedlings like cress hanging out of his mouth. 3 pots had just stumpy little stalks left in them, the Acacia caulescens and the Zygophyllum and the Leptorynchus.  Fortunately the others were ok.
So the cat was banned from the kitchen, and I had to sheepishly report back to Jim and Dr Phil that the huge amount of effort in getting the seeds to the UK and germinated had culminated in a cat-snack.

Fortunatley they took it very well and have even sent over more seed of different species that we now have growing on the windowsill…the cat is still banned!

Dave

Luciano and Andrew Ewing went to Burlington Stone to choose the pieces of slate stone for the water feature. Burlington is a quarry in the middle of the Lake District and is surrounded by beautiful countryside. Having chosen the stone, the quarry set the stone slabs out in the position that they will be used in the garden. That way Luciano and Andrew, who is building the pool, can get a good idea of how the stones will fit within the whole design.

The full team spent the day at Darren’s reclamation yard. Cleve brought his video camera and filmed us at work.

Click here to watch the film.

Over the years we have developed a good network of nurseries across the UK and Europe. Different countries are better than others at specific varieties and the German nurseries are very good at clipped hedging and large trees. Here is Luciano visiting Bruns nursery in Northern Germany to tag the exact plants that he is looking for to be used in the Laurent-Perrier garden this year. This will be shipped over to the Crocus nursery in late March in time to acclimatize to the UK environment.