Luciano came to visit us today to go through the final details for the garden. We also started loading the plants for his garden in anticipation of starting on site on Wednesday. After the beautiful weather we have been having recently, it was slightly inevitable that it should start raining on our first day but we are very used to it. Last year we had torrential rain on our first day.
One of the big challenges for the Daily Telegraph garden is to try and get the Cornus Kousa in full flower by the time the judges come round on the 18th May. Cornus tend to come into flower in June or even July, depending on the weather. So in order to push it forward, we have got the two Cornus in one of our glasshouses. The photograph shows that the bract (it may look like a flower but it actually is a bract) is quite well developed but is still very green. Although this warm weather is really helping in pushing things forward, it be will touch and go whether it comes out in its full glory by the 18th. The second photogarph shows what it needs to look like!
The hot weather over the last week has really brought on the plants – a bit faster than we had expected. We are busily moving plants out of the polytunnels into the shade areas. There is about an 8 degree difference in temperature and the shade cuts out most of the sunlight. Hopefully this will slow them down enough to keep them in flower over the next few weeks.
If anyone tells you that gardening people are not driven, competitive beasts, then I suggest you don’t believe them! Last Saturday we had an Open Day at Crocus. It’s an opportunity for people to look round the nursery, buy lots of plants and to see what we are preparing for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. The sun shone and we were amazed by the number of people who turned up – well over a 1,000.
During the day Mark Straver and I gave a series of guided tours around the nursery showing people around the Chelsea Tunnels. Out of the corner of one eye I saw the designer of one of the Chelsea Show Gardens (not one that we are working with) having a good snoop around the tunnels trying to find out what we are growing for Ulf and Luciano. Given that I know the person quite well, I was quite surprised that they did not come up and say hello! Garden designers up to dirty tricks – whatever next!!
Despite the best attempts by the French fishermen who have been blockading Calais and other ports, Ulf’s first truck arrived from Sweden. On it was the metal frame for the pool structure. Weighing over 3 tonnes, we needed to use a crane to unload it and position it on one of our own trucks, ready to go to Chelsea next week.
Cassandra Jardine interviewed Mark Fane, the person at Crocus responsible for building the gardens at Chelsea and described him as the Control Freak’s Control Freak!
Jessica Salter joined us on our trip to Sweden and in this article she describes the work that has been going on in Sweden in preparation for Chelsea this year.
Ulf visited us this week to go through the last few details of the garden and to see how the plants are growing. The warm weather over the last few weeks has pushed the plants on well with some of them being put into the shade tunnels to slow them down.
Mark Fane has built 18 Gold medal gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show, 8 of which have won 'Best in Show' award. Mark set up crocus.co.uk with Peter Clay in 2000.
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