Pebble dash

Yesterday was spent in Cumbria, also taking in a wee bit of Yorkshire and Lancashire for good measure. Jonathan and I visited Maggy Howarth, designer and maker of the most beautiful pebble mosaics I have ever seen. She lives in a farmhouse high on the Lancashire moors with views extending to Yorkshire in one direction and other counties in the other. Her enviable location has had it's drawbacks in the prolonged snowy weather as she was completely cut off for several days; snow still covered the steep narrow lanes leading to her house and we had to leave the car at the end of road and walk along a treacherous icy track to reach her door.

All well worth the journey and with a cuppa warming our hands we discussed the Chelsea garden and how the mosaic fitted into the design before having a tour of the workshop, and then onto Maggy's studio to discuss design options. With four creative-minded people in the room, it was an interesting and somewhat lively discussion! How much colour, what pattern, shall we reflect design details of the aviary, birds and what type...? Parakeets were looked up in books (what gorgeous bright colours they are), but in the end we chose another classical bird with a long tail. Can't say more than that at this stage, but all will be revealed soon.

A dash back to Jonathan's place at Yewbarrow House, Grange-over-Sands to meet up with Alan Ward who is doing the sculptor in the aviary. Further interesting discussions here but a bit more work is needed as there seems to be three different opinions on what the options are at the moment!

Good news on the stone for the terrace wall. The pile of stones at Jonathan's hotel is perfect! His team have re-built a stone wall there using stones from a dismantled old wall and the end result is a mix of mossy weathered limestone and slate, all looking looking pretty fab. Jonathan's asking his team to come down to Chelsea to build the wall in the Victorian Aviary Garden.

Stepping up the details

I sat drinking my Chamomile tea in the lovely contemporary restaurant at Anglesey Abbey on Monday when Mark Richardson, landscaper for the Chelsea garden, looked me in the eye and said: 'So what was the step height in Victorian times and what style was the over-hang?' A quick chat with Jonathan Denby, Victorian gardens specialist extraordinaire and my co-designer, resulted in an excited phone conversation last night.

We'd already decided on curved steps up the terrace where the aviary will sit in all it's sumptuous splendour: 'Curved steps are Gertrude Jekyll's favourite design for gardens' said Jonathan reading from her book on landscape details she wrote with Christopher Hussey, Garden Ornament. Apparently there's a whole chapter on steps and it begins: 'The decorative value of steps consists primarily in the alternation of horizontal bands of light and shade - shining treads and dark risers. If this is always borne in mind, the right proportion of rise to tread will follow naturally'. It seems we have Mark's question answered.

The terrace on The Victorian Aviary Garden at Chelsea is paved with Cumbrian slate and the raised drystone wall made from limestone. Back to Monday, and Mark wanted to know if we had any 'used' i.e. weathered stones suitable for the wall. Over to Jonathan again who happens to have some dismantled drystone walling available from a garden being re-designed at one of his hotels in Cumbria. It's slate not limestone, but we could have a mixed wall in the Chelsea garden. 'Take some photos and bring some stone samples to the next meeting!' I instruct him.

I was keen to have a flavour of Cumbria in the Chelsea design to reflect the sponsor, South Lakes Hotels, and because I was so charmed by Jonathan's own garden at Yewbarrow House at Grange over Sands when I was last there in early September. The photo above shows a beautiful drystone wall in the Yewbarrow House garden and we're hoping to get the same craftsman who built this to do the terrace wall for the Chelsea garden.

Resolutions

I'm being foster-mum at the moment to a nice collection of plants, destined for a client's front garden. I was due to plant up a couple of weeks before Christmas but, soon after the plants were delivered, we had 10 days of heavy snow and frost here in Cambridgeshire. Then it was Christmas, ditto, then New Year, ditto. Snow still blatently lounges around the garden, although I did some green lawn the other day blinking in the midday sun. My hopes are set for planting my charges next week, I shall miss them greatly.

The excitement of doing a Chelsea Flower Show and Hampton Court Palace Flower Show garden is still keen and biting. The paperwork is flowing, relentlessly, not to mention the research and frantic exchanges of e-mails! Less than four months before we on site at Chelsea, how scary is that? On Thursday it's a five hour drive to Cumbria to see Jonathan and chew through my long list of things to discuss. On Friday we are meeting Maggy Howarth who is designing and producing the mosaic path, she lives just over the border in Yorkshire from Jonathan. Maggy is already putting her mind to the design and I'm really looking forward to seeing her ideas.

Long meeting yesterday with Mark Richardson of Stewart Landscapes, he's building the garden for us. We met at Anglesey Abbey, the half-way point for both of us. Sadly no time to visit the Winter Garden or see snowdrops, maybe next time. Reminds me, I still have to write up the minutes of the meeting!

Hampton Court preps are also progressing well. It's still hush-hush at the moment with the design aspects, hopefully I can reveal all in March.

Tidings of great joy

After much gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands and chewing of fingernails, I found out yesterday that Jonathan Denby and I have had our garden accepted for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show! Yippeeeee!!

Thank goodness for the Christmas break to get myself organised in the office and sort out some project planning as now doing two show gardens next year. Hope the influx of grey hairs won't speed up as next year unravels...

As I looked out over my snow-covered garden this morning, it occurred that I really should have dug my dahlias up and salvaged some rather nice species pelargoniums earlier in the month.

Well seasoned

Summer's end and autumn's glory seem like a dim, distant memory now. Here we are, a week before Christmas and I feel like a mole blinking in the daylight and wondering where the last few months have gone. It's great to have been busy, but now my office looks like a tornado has visited and deposited piles of paperwork in places where it shouldn't be, makes it a challenge to find information at times! Sadly, I am looking forward to a couple days over the Christmas break to get the office into order for 2010. And tidy the garden (might take more than a couple of days).

Talking about tornadoes, over the last couple of months gardens have been created and planted in equally challenging conditions as hefty autumnal gales battered pots waiting to be planted out, wafted mypex membrane like a Cirque Du Soleil repertoire and left me feeling like a barnacle clinging to the side of a rock (or hillside, in this case). Remind me again what is glamorous about being a garden designer?

Autumn is RHS show garden application time, too, when forms of all shapes and sizes are filled in and changed many times, designs endlessly tweaked, re-tweaked and re-tweaked again, all in the general outpouring of time to get your design noticed by the RHS design panel. I have it on good authority that the panel always find something to pick up and I maverickly enjoy the mental challenge of working out what that 'something' is. At the moment, I'm waiting to hear about a RHS Chelsea Flower Show application, my first garden there, which I have co-designed with Jonathan Denby who has the most fantastic hillside garden, Yewbarrow House, at Grange-Over-Sands in Cumbria. Views to die for, plants to salivate over. He's a bit of an expert in Victorian gardens and there lies the clue to our design submission.

Hampton Court Palace Flower Show beckons next July, too. I was selected as designer by Girlguiding UK for their Centenary garden in August, much to my surprise and delight. It's an incredibly fun project to work on and completely different to anything I've done before. But that's all part, I feel, of the evolution of being a garden designer - to be challenged out of your comfort zone and push out the boundaries of your design thinking. This garden is definitely happening although we await the RHS feedback on the design submission (I think I've worked out what they are not going to like). I can't say anything about the design at this stage, but just don't expect the expected! Think fun and the unexpected.

Done and dusted

Wow, another RHS Silver-Gilt medal for my Hampton Court show garden! Fantastic news, at least I'm consistent having gained three of the same medals in the last three years exhibiting at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Lots of media attention (great garden for photographers of all abilities), loved by the visitors and Sadolin, the sponsor, very happy at feedback, too.

A planting plan for a square border will soon be available to purchase through my main website, http://www.philippapearson.co.uk/, and the border will show planting for year round interest. The border for the Sadolin show garden had to look at it's best for that period, but did actually contain many plants that would look good through autumn and winter with interest from seedheads and grasses. In response to visitor's enquiries, I thought it would be good to have a plan for people to try at home, showing plants that would add interest throughout all the seasons.

It ain't half hot, mum

A snatched night back at home, complete with bag of dirty washing in exchange for a bag of clean clothes! This week has been amazing and I'm still not sure how everyone, the plants, and I have survived the intense heat. I've been drinking three litres of water a day, working outside for 12 hours and then not sleeping much back at the hotel. No surprise I feel somewhat shattered, then! All nicely finished off with a two hour traffic jam on the M25 on the way home.

But wow, how everyone has worked hard! Marc and his team from Garden Care have been incredible and have done a fantastic job getting everything painted and finished. Janet, Nick and Siobhan have sweltered under a burning sun planting all the plants - thank you all! It's great to be in the position of having the garden practically finished, just need to set out all the items from John Lewis Kingston on Saturday then tidy up the plants for judging on Monday.

Sneak preview of the garden...