There’s less than a month to go now until, you know, the BIG event – the Chelsea Flower Show – which starts on 22nd May and ends on 26th May.
As you may know, if you’ve been following my blog, I have been entered into this year’s show as a wild-card entrant – apparently the committee decided that “wild” summed up my demeanour. Charming.
However there was one condition. They felt that, worthy as it might sound, my chosen theme of “Sticks, digging and dirt” was lacking in a few areas. Most areas in fact. Apparently I am missing a few essential items from a “contemporary” garden, such as free standing mirrors, concrete, opaque ceramic gravel and the such like. Oh, and and a mirror pond (free-standing mirrors, for the matching thereof.)
I’ve tried a few prototypes of the mirror pond, but I just can’t stand it when the water gets still enough to be a mirror, and feel obliged to jump in. As luck would have it, I spotted something in the small print of the committee’s design brief that might be my salvation. There’s an optional extra component that entrants are able to use in their garden – plants. Who would have thought?
It means a late change to my design but I think I can pull them off. The flowers I mean. Literally. So today, as Mum was in the garden anyway, it was a great chance to hone my design. And oh, what fun we had as my assistant and I toiled away, Mum providing the materials for planting.
But this double-naming convention for plants is REALLY confusing when you’re only one. I mean, really, she kept putting perfectly good plants into this old bucket on the basis that their scientific name is friggin’ stubborn weed and in the interests of biological diversity, the completely unrelated bastarding, bastards of bastardiness weed. To be honest there were so many that I began to lose track but I will admit to being rather taken with the whimsically named come out you horrible little Jeremy Hunt of a weed.
Any way, these petty issues aside it was a great team effort and after an hour, Mum had, to her apparent consternation, an empty bucket, while my innovative design was spread across the lawn for critical review. And of course, the design not only showed good use of planted materials but also put a tick in the box for using recycled materials.
The opinions of the local judges included some high praise indeed
Oh Angus, look at what have you done!
Oh Angus, I have never seen anything like it!
Oh Angus, you duckwit* (this one from Dad)
- Ed: spelling?
Chelsea? It’s just about sewn up.
Angus
