They say that divorce, moving house, and bereavement are the most stressful things that can happen in one's life, but 'they' have never designed a Show Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. I have been working on this project for over a year, but with less than 100 days to go the reality of what I have taken on is beginning to dawn... better late than never!I'm sitting on a delayed GNER train (dead person on the line) with my shoes caked in mud. I've been to the Johnson Wellfield quarry in Huddersfield today with Andy Loudon, award-winning dry-stone waller, to see the stone for my garden. One of the consequences of being a garden designer is getting over-excited about stone and paving. Everywhere I go I'm scanning to see if there are any ideas I can use in my gardens. Friends will be at best perplexed and at worst incredulous as we are walking to the pub or a restaurant and I start gushing over a beautiful stone wall or an exquisite piece of detailing (or slagging off an example of poor workmanship). So today, when I had a whole quarry (not to mention the stone used to build Huddersfield railway station) to amaze at, I was in my element. It was also fascinating to see a working quarry, including the most enormous diamond cutting machines, and a huge 3 metre circular saw - visions of James Bond in Octopussy crossed my mind...
All of the staff at the quarry were friendly and falling over themselves to be helpful. Is this an example of Yorkshire hospitality I wonder, or is it a Landscaping thing? I haven't been to Huddersfield before. Coming from London as I do, it's always nice to travel outside the Capital and experience the generosity and hospitality shown to visitors elsewhere in Britain.
I used to work in Investment Banking in the City, and I'm still blown away by how kind and helpful people in the Landscaping business generally are. The nice thing about the Chelsea Flower Show is that, in theory, everyone could get a gold medal or everyone could get none. So, while a friendly rivalry exists, because we're not in direct competition with each other, there is none of the bitter back-biting that I left the City to escape. I have planted two gardens at Chelsea over the last two years, and I've really got the bug. This was probably partly due to the gardens winning gold medals (the Savills garden last year and Andy Sturgeon's Merrill Lynch garden the year before that), but more than that it's the buzz, the adrenaline, and the camaraderie that draws you back to the Chelsea Flower Show year after year.
Linda Bush is a garden designer based in Kent.
