The Unexpected Gardener

We know there are only a few months to go when the Chelsea nightmares start to kick in. I’ve had my first: the protagonist knows who he is as I called him in the cold light of day to tell him off about his appearance in my dream, in which he, at the 2012 show, decides to change his design at the last minute, incorporating, instead of the proposed structure, a life-size galleon made of Playmobil. The garden was accessorised by matching pine wardrobes and  chests of drawers.

I have absolutely no idea where this would come from, but if a ship appears on Main Avenue in May, you heard it here first.

The Shinto/Buddhist Groundbreaking Ceremony, on day 1, was the first sign that things are done differently here.

Various prayers, which I guess we all offer up in our own way at the beginning of any build, are in Japan formally structured into a ceremony which is the norm at  the commencement of the construction of a house or garden.

And so to work: from this

To this

Via a nursery visit to this  (yes still in the ground 3 days before its appearance at the show). 

Works had to stop on one day as there was a wedding on site…

Despite our plant-sourcing  worries beforehand, the Japanese contractors were amazing. Attention to detail is the key, and  the fact that my contractor Taka had a sleepless night due to the fact the fall of the site had ended up at 1mm less than perfectly level, is testament to the care and precision that was taken with building.

There’s no real concept of structures being built ‘just for Show’: benches were engineered to last for twenty years instead of twenty days.

The finished product:

 So, I’ve spent the last week here:

In Japan.

I kid you not: Huis Tens Bosch is a theme
park, the size of Monaco, which is entirely dedicated to Holland and
all things Dutch. It even has a clog shop.

I was invited  to this location along with 15 other designers to compete in the second ever Gardening World Cup: essentially Chelsea, on a tighter budget and even tighter construction time of ten days. Plants are sourced once on site, rather different to the year’s growing time we might have here, and some unusual  interpretations of plant requests, eg  my request for 50 x 2L Eupatorium was interpreted as 50 x plugs delivered the day before judging. That was my only weepy moment.

However, when you remember that the Show is “For World Peace and the Regeneration of Japan’, and you spend a day in Nagasaki seeing exactly what we are capable of doing to each other when we forget the bigger picture, the  weepy moments are easily put to one side.

Nagasaki Peace Park.

At the park’s north end is the 10-metre-tall Peace Statue created by sculptor Seibou Kitamura. The statue’s right hand points to the threat of nuclear weapons while the extended left hand symbolizes eternal peace. The mild face symbolizes divine grace and the gently closed eyes offer a prayer for the repose of the bomb victims’ souls. The folded right leg and extended left leg signify both meditation and the initiative to stand up and rescue the people of the world. Installed in front of the statue is a black marble vault containing the names of the atomic bomb victims and survivors who died in subsequent years.

More pics including the construction of my garden to come…

After 2000 emails  each showing me an increasingly-forlorn looking nurseryman holding individual plants to be ok-d for the show, I’m ready to go.  I’ve had  an hour to  work out  where I’m going – how I’m going to get from one side of Tokyo to the other and thence down to Nagasaki, from where a high-speed ferry will take me to the Dutch homage that is Huis Ten Bosch for three weeks, I’m not quite sure.

Passport, money, tickets. And the garden plans.

I’ll let you know.

You know when you get those emails from long-lost relatives who want to leave you all their money, and just need your bank details so they can transfer the cash now rather than later?

Most people ignore them.

So when I had an email a few months ago from a very-nice sounding Phil from Japan, inviting me to take part in the second Gardening World Cup, building a fully-sponsored garden, I naturally accepted straight away, sending my bank details by return.

In April, September seemed a long long way away; suddenly after what I actually think was rather a dreamy summer weather-wise, I’m getting emails from my lovely Facilitator in Nagasaki, showing me photos of each individual plant he’s sourced from my list. It’ll be interesting: some of them look like they’ve just been dug up: ie in the pic I could see their roots and they weren’t in pots and were being held in the air by a helpful nurseryman.

I’m getting a crash course in hydraulics from Simon Percival – http://www.artinthelandscape.com - I’m clearly a promising student as he’s just told me he’s got a ticket to Nagasaki to oversee the installation. Impressive.

More about the garden itself coming up….

This’ll be interesting: Mark Diacono, Common Farm Flowers and Treebox: these guys have all agreed to exhibit as a ‘ Bright Green Shoot’ (oh yes) at this year’s NGS. What do they have in common? Well, nothing really. I’d say they are all completely different in character, approach and product: but they’re all doing something a little bit new. http://www.bathandwest.com/national-gardening/95/

In the middle of planning this jamboree, I’ve been having fun with  smells and false perspectives http://www.jothompson-garden-design.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/08/the-rat-that-wasnt-there/

: as well as getting down to Sissinghurst to see Mark Diacono, Hugh FW and Sarah Raven being inspirational – as ever – we were treated to some biblical skies http://twitpic.com/67kddg

I’m being very discreet at Chelsea 2011. Well, I thought I was. With plans in hand for 2012, this year was meant to be a break, until I was asked by Helen Sinclair to design a space for her in which to exhibit her sculptures. Never one to do things by halves, I’ve made a little garden. Here’s the proposed planting http://www.scribd.com/doc/50863541

I’m supposed to be packing for a trip to Warsaw w the lovely AFT  tomorrow to speak at the conference of Landscape Architects, but having just seen the weather forecast (snow), I’ve found a million other things to do.

I found my nine year-old at the breakfast table this morning reading ‘A Taste of the Unexpected’. Bearing in mind she is a great consumer of beautiful photography, I wasn’t surprised, until I then watched her get, go to the back door, have a think, and then ask where in our tiny and as yet bare garden we could plant our very own pecan tree.

This is what Mark Diacono’s book does. It gets you. It explains how to make the most of a small space, or what do to do with a larger area, all without the slightest hint of patronising or assuming that we know when a medlar is ready to pick – I hadn’t a clue. It’s a book for grown-ups, but I saw this morning that if you write it right, you can hook the children too.

I’m easily bored by the fare, both edible and literary, of self-conscious ‘lifestyle cookery’ writers whom I’d bet have chefs of their own, but it’s pretty clear from the first page that Mark  really really does, in real life, the things he says he does in his writing. He researches the plant, he shares his own experiments in growing, he suggests varieties that will work for us in our small plot, frost pocket or raised bed, and he provides us with a sensible recipe or two with each fruit, vegetable, nut, herb, spice and flower. ‘Make your garden unbuyable’, he says. ‘Food is at its finest when it slows down a little, when we give it a chance to be enjoyed for the journey as much as the result’

And the even-better news? He’s just opened up online, so to speak, so the whole Otter Farm/Taste Of is a one-stop shop http://www.otterfarmshop.co.uk/ Dangerous on the purse, but  means I have to do NO FURTHER RESEARCH.

I stood with my daughter this morning and showed her where we could plant the quince. She referred to the helpful ‘making a wishlist’ and ‘planning your space’ sections: I referred her to the ‘turning your wishlist into reality’ section. We were incredibly late for school, but I felt the lesson we’d both shared in that time was going to spark something that will stay with us for a long, long time.

Seems to have been quite a lot of the former and not so much of the latter lately. I try not to wave the Single Mother of Two banner, but, just when you’re taking a call from a client, you get ambushed  from behind your bedroom door by a small boy wearing ski goggles who’s been reading too many Andy MacNab SAS books, it makes you take a long hard look at the day’s structure.

Full-time work and bringing up children with no extra childcare is my choice, and I believe it completely possible, though it does entail a working day that  begins at 8am, then begins once again at 8pm due to an early evening hiatus of school run, tea, homework and bed (bathtime until recently appeared irrelevant to my eleven year-old son, but his discovery of hair straighteners and Lynx seems to have brought the shower back into his list of things that exist, joining  Liverpool Football Club, cricket and Tinie Tempah). However, the children are now starting to have an opinion. They answer the office phone if I’m not around: “Sorry, Professor James, Mummy’s on the LOO”. Their trip to see me at Chelsea this year summed up why you should never take a small child to Chelsea: to a journalist’s question as to what they thought of their mum’s work there: “I’m so bored it hurts”.They seem to want my company more  and more, strange as that sounds. (I promise you, it does feel peculiar when you’re favoured over MarioKart and Spongebob Squarepants)

So, I’m facing a re-organisation of time-management. Do I stop the self-employed, working-from-home habit of working every free hour that there is,  working through the day and then fitting in a bit extra here and there where I can, simply because I can? Do I commit to a 9-5 Mon-Fri routine? Immediately I can see that that won’t work: clients are home at weekends and that’s when it’s convenient for them and me to be in their gardens, in daylight. Or do I listen to a wise friend who points out that as all has worked well up until now, why change it?

As I write this,  having returned from a quick watch of my daughter’s netball match (duty done and reminded once more why I loathed netball at school) I can see out of the corner of my eye a sketch  she drew of her ‘dream garden’, which includes fairies, talking snails and a swimming pool. I cast a wistful look over the wreckage that constitutes our garden.  Next to her drawing  is a list she made of the jobs she needs to have in order to afford the Manhattan loft she found on Prime Location the other day. Maybe I should just shelve the guilt, and thank my lucky stars that she’ll never see me join the Parents’ Netball Squad.

I know this blog is a little bit late: before anyone makes any remarks about elephants having gestated more quickly than  it took me to post this blog update, it has been on my mind A LOT (waking up in middle of night in cold sweat of guilt etc).  Trying to figure out one single thing to write about was clearly a waste of time: too many were happening concurrently ,and after all, That’s Life. So here are some of the highlights: no low points to be mentioned as it’s a new year and the positive thinking resolution is still in its infancy

A Resumé of 2010

RHS Chelsea 2010 turned out to be a very good one. The Thrive Urban garden was awarded a gold medal and best urban garden in show by some very lovely judges, one of whom was fantastically charitable in donating his leaflet-handing-out services during the busiest day of the show. Photo to follow but he wears rather a dashing hat…

The day after the show closed, I arrived home to a labrador puppy who slept on my head for the next two weeks (actually that was a bit of a lowpoint too)

Two people changed my life: an office assistant and a design assistant

Some rather lovely clients flew me to Switzerland to a blank canvas of a garden overlooking Lake Lugano and the mountains beyond. I need say no more. (Although another lowpoint was the first “please don’t tell me I’ve got  to fly in that”  glimpse of the ‘plane’ that was to take me from Zurich to the lake – I’ve seen hairdryers bigger than that)

‘I’ (actually ‘we’, or, truthfully, ‘the contractor’) finally worked out how to build  one of Jamie Oliver’s pizza ovens. And jolly well worth it too: the client threw a Thanksgiving party in the long, thin garden in Hammersmith, tossing pizzas happily for hungry landscapers

The snow meant that I caught up with accounts and filing

I developed a surprisingly-obsessive interest in public spaces and why we need them.Of which more next time

A very Happy New Year to you

Jx