Building a RHS show garden - the highs and the lows

Jill and Simon Foxley together run the The Perfumed Garden company based in Royston Hertfordshire.

Today Jill joins Landscape Juice as a guest blogger and lets us in on what it was like, from the blackest lows to the many highs, to build their first show garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show.

Jill takes over the story.

The Healing Garden

I suspect that only a small percentage of people will be aware that this week, deep in the heart of our capital city, decisions are being made that may change lives in the landscaping and gardening industry.

The hallowed halls of the RHS are resonant with decisions on who, where and what will be staged at their prestigious garden Shows and despite the deep snowy mantle that is spread across much of the country, all thoughts there are turning to summer.

We at ‘The Perfumed Garden’ staged our first Show garden last year at Hampton Court. It was without a doubt a more extreme emotional experience than I could have ever expected in a work-related environment.

The lows were black, lonely places that seemed like dark bath plug holes you had to disappear all the way down to get out of them, but the highs were spectacular and well worth the trip through the downpipe to get to them.

Thankfully there were many more highs than lows and even the bad times prove that the obstacles can be overcome with tenacity and stamina. Opening “yet another mailshot from the RHS” in February last year, with irritation and thoughts such as “how much money must they spend on correspondence that is just thrown away?”, I read in disbelief and euphoria over and over again that we had been accepted, before I could finally grasp the impact of this letter.

To be honest, I’d almost forgotten I had entered and really didn’t expect to get in anyway! Trying to phone Simon to impart the delicious news proved to be an impossible feat, as the words wouldn’t come out and the noise that emanated from my mouth was more of an animalistic wail.

We were embarking on one of those proverbial excursions that set out as an impossible dream and end up changing your life. ‘The Spirits’ Garden’ started life as an evening out with friends and manifested itself in a bronze medal in the small garden section at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2008.

(The blog we kept throughout that eventful year is still available to view at www.spiritsgarden.co.uk)

This year we are hoping to be off again – the submissions for Hampton small gardens were due in at the beginning of January. I would love to say that this was accomplished with ease and plenty of time before the deadline, however, as these things tend to be, it was very last minute and necessitated Royal Mail ensuring Special Delivery for that particular Friday morning!

If we are selected for this years Show, there will be the inevitable highs and lows but I am sure it will never be as enchantingly, but blissfully and agonisingly acute as the first time.

Applications involve submitting plans of the garden, planting plans, 3D drawings, costings, environmental forms and the dreaded draft clients brief. By the time these are all winging their way through the postal service, each designer has usually spent many hours, days or weeks thinking, researching, sketching, asking, deciding and finally drawing and writing up the finished product.

Every one of these documents is as important as the next and overlooking one small detail (as in a clients’ garden) can have a massive impact on the end result. The plans are, of course, the visual decision making tool but the draft clients brief is also key and reputations can be made or mutilated by its wording.

This harmless looking document is the basis on which the garden is built and assessed. Each section of it ensures that as a designer, you have thought through the concept and execution of the garden and all the elements contained within it, whether they are hard landscaping or planting and every other tiny consideration between. In essence, you set yourself up to score the goal and it’s up to you whether you do and how many.

The smallest, innocent phrase can affect your marks on judging day if it is wrong or unachieved – a tree that the judges have been told that is ‘in blossom’ will be marked down if the blossom is over or will not burst into life until the day after judging.

Funding and the lack of it has also occupied many hours of telephone and email communication prior to the application entry. Last year we self-funded and although it was totally down to us, The Perfumed Garden, we had the glorious indulgence that it was us and us alone who made the decisions from start to finish on everything.

This year, if we are ‘in’, we have the name of a major charity behind us and all the help that brings; sadly no money, but a great cause that has brought us offers of loans of materials from the most unexpected quarters.

All will be gratefully and thankfully received should that letter land on my doormat……………..

The Perfumed Garden

Address: 4 Abrams Lane | Chrishall | Royston | Herts | SG8 8QD

Email: simon@the-perfumed-garden.co.uk

Telephone: 01763 838870

Website: http://the-perfumed-garden.co.uk/