Where have all the flowers gone?

A Show Garden disappears...

It's strange, isn't it, that my last horticultural project before I returned to work at Stoke CAB on Thursday (worthy of a post in its own right later), was the destruction of a garden.  Although I had helped to construct Reaseheath's 'Secret Garden' in 2011, I hadn't been there for the breakdown, so it was a shock to arrive at what had been the St Luke's Silver Anniversary Garden on Monday and to find, in place of the vibrant colours of the flowers and glossy green turf, what appeared to be a giant mud pie. 

One thing was very clear; whatever my duties were to be that day, they were unlikely to include watering.  The site was sodden - unusual for Tatton Park, which has the most extraordinary sandy sub-soil and so usually drains readily - but there had been torrential downpours during Sunday and in fact within minutes of starting work, the rain came down again and everyone scattered for shelter under the nearest gazebo and an early lunch, jumping at the occasional streak of lightning or vicious crack of thunder.  From our vantage point, it looked as if Manchester was being annihilated by a 'War of the Worlds' style alien invasion.*

A break in the clouds

It was a far cry from the broiling heat of the build or the summery days that had made all but the last day of the RHS Show such a success.  The show gardens had been to the customary excellent standard, with beautiful planting setting off both graceful design and some decidedly off-the-wall ideas.  The one I would happily have shipped in its entirety to my own back garden was 'Splash', with its cooling plunge pool and equally cooling pallet of deep blue and white flowers sprinkled with some sunshine-yellow, though it would have been nice to find space for a 'My-pod' too! 

Splash! - definitely my Best in Show

The Young Designers of the Year had also produced some fine work - honey-coloured planting in a bee-friendly garden, recycled wine bottles forming a wall behind another eco-friendly design and finally a tasteful matching of edible and ornamental in 'Escape to the City'.

This year's concept was the 'Galaxy Garden', interpreted in a wide variety of ways from the elegantly terrestrial 'Star Gazers Retreat', it's gentle-coloured planting appropriately including a lovely white Cosmos and a Stargate entrance greened with Sempervivums (a bit of trend this year?  I do hope so, as I have lots propagating!) to the other Reaseheath exhibit, Jonathan Price's Einstein-inspired 'Mu-No Thing'.  All credit to our Jonathan, but I'd have the Star Gazer's garden reconstructed down the garden (just down from my personal 'Splash') if funds allowed and they'd turn the lights off in the shopping centre at night so I could actually see the stars.

The judges went for 'Gravitational Pull' as the best: there's no accounting for taste, is there? 

Steel City Show Garden

The actual 'Best Large Garden' was a 'neighbour' of the St Luke's Garden, 'A Stainless Century', marking the centenary of the invention of stainless steel and a tribute to the steel-making heritage and skill of Sheffield, a city for which I've always had great affection since being a student there in the 1980s.  The garden was stunning, using steel creatively for boundaries (including some clever panels illustrating steel products made in Sheffield and a representation of the disparagingly nick-named 'Egg Box' annex of the Town Hall), sculpture and ground cover, though it wasn't a garden you could run about in with bare feet!  The planting was truly lovely, and even at breakdown time the plants looked gorgeous, clustered together but now under steel grey skies.

The designer confessed to having briefly faced a moral dilemma.  The Chancellor, George Osborne, made a visit to the Flower Show (Tatton Park has the misfortune to be in his constituency) and was sighted moving in the direction of the Stainless Century Garden, then talking to Rick about our St Luke's Garden (shame I wasn't there - 'Interested in hospices are we, Chancellor?  Like a chat about what your Welfare Reforms are doing for people with terminal illnesses?').  With the affection of most Sheffielders for Tories, the gut reaction of the 'Stainless' crew was 'We're not having him in our garden!', but then they considered their responsibilities to their sponsors, appropriate RHS decorum etc, and reluctantly conceded they probably ought to at least be civil to him.  As he left the St Luke's garden, they braced themselves for the encounter, at which point he made a sharp right turn (has he ever done anything else?) and vanished into the floral marquee!

Rather than name-check the whole show, take a look at some of my favourites on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30634865@N03/sets/72157634870475289/

It's now a week after the show, and it'll all be gone.  But this isn't supposed to be the end of my own gardening career or this blog.  If you're still following it for the odd gardening tip, they will still be there, though it's fair to say they'll probably be jostling for space between even more odds and ends of politics and social policy than before.  How I'll balance my jobs now is hard to say - right at the moment, I have some notes to write for a talk to the Pensioners Convention on Monday, and yet I really want to go outdoors and prune my ridiculously tall Philadelphus now it has finished flowering. 

And instead of doing either, I'm blogging and kicking around ideas to promote those books of mine.  Just two days of the 'Severe Discomfort' ebook freebie to go and just under 200 downloads so far - get yours now, or wait until Monday to spend a whole 75p and buy an adviser a brew! 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Severe-Discomfort-Social-Insecurity-ebook/dp/B00C69HMRM/ref=kinw_dp_ke

* For the sci-fi officianados out there, that's as in the Tom Cruise movie rather than the arguably much superior HG Wells novel.