It is good news for Jill and Simon at The Perfumed Garden because their application to build a show garden at this years Hampton Court has been accepted.
Jill is going to be blogging here on Landscape Juice about all the highs and the lows and, fingers crossed, we will see them come away with a medal.
Here is the first blog on Jill and Simon's journey...
No, not a combination of an 'annoying and conceited' person or even an exotic island capital, but a phonetic enunciation of my first visit to a supplier in 'Harrogate', writes Jill Foxley.
Simply stunning, stunning, stunning crocuses in great carpeted swathes over acres of well tended grass show us Southern lasses a thing or two about floral displays.
However, this excursion north of Watford was the first of the many and vital visits to suppliers to organise the hundreds of facets that are forming The Healing Garden. It's all official, we have been accepted into the Small Garden category at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2009. And so it begins again..........
Last year we funded our first ever show garden at Hampton Court ourselves. This meant we at The Perfumed Garden designed, bought, staged and manned everything to do with it - we lived and breathed it for at least eighteen months - from the first "What if we...." to the tearing it down after the Show ended.
This year, with the garden highlighting the importance of plants within the production of conventional and herbal treatments for cancer patients, we are bowled over to have the support of Macmillan Cancer Support as our partners. Obviously a charity with some clout, we have worked hard over the last six months to encourage a lengthy list of suppliers who have all pledged to help out in various ways.
The main thing being that all these companies and individuals believe in the same thing, and that is to raise the Macmillan profile at no cost to the public that generously give donations to them. It's down to us to find our sponsors and it takes an inordinate amount of time and organisation to secure these. T
he list is long indeed and all but a very few will be already have been written to, telephoned, or visited and all will be done so again, maybe several times over until we get the end result we are setting out to achieve.
Starting last week, Harrogate (aka 'Arragit') was the first port of call. I was there to meet Antony Sturgiss for the first time. A memorable meeting indeed, and one where you open your mouth, think "I've started so I'll finish". By that time it's too late and the conversation takes the oddest turns taking you onto some unexpected subjects, such as the pronunciation of 'Harrogate' to name probably the least extraordinary.
Arriving at his studio in an old dairy farmyard, I pushed open the metal barn door to find a great bear of a man staring intently at me in a very serious fashion from his blanket-covered armchair. Around the studio there was every conceivable artefact that a metal sculptor may have required both for work and 'not work', over what looked like a considerable number of years.
Some I would have expected such as the RHS Guide To Plants and Flowers, pens, metal fragments, loo roll (!), etc but after a few minutes spent passing pleasantries there was a very odd scuffling and whimpering noise from up on a beamed support above my head.
I don't do rats or any other kind of dragging-tailed vermin, especially if it's about to pounce on me, so imagine the stab of terror that coursed through my veins at this point. "'S'only Willow" calmed the gentle giant before me, as he pulled out the ladder and fetched down his pet barn owl. She was an absolute beauty and not at all what I expected to see him with.
t seems the additional character that was liberally sprinkled throughout a significant area of the studio, was a reasonably thick layer of guano, duly demonstrated by the splat that dolloped down his back and onto the floor as she sat on his shoulder.
We discussed many things - some I can repeat, some are better left unsaid, although I do now know the finer points of bird of prey artificial insemination! T
he main thing was he has offered us some of his beautiful pieces for The Healing Garden and I will be thrilled to have them there in pride of place at our second Hampton Court garden. So that's number one ticked off the list.................
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