After months of preparation, my co-designer Lisa and I have arrived at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern to start building our ‘Out of Darkness’ Garden. It all starts with a dauntingly blank patch of land, which in our case, measures 9 metres by 6 metres and slopes from one corner to the other.

With his usual ‘no messing around’ approach, Daniel Herrington of Daniel Herrington Landscapes arrived at 8am on the dot and literally jumped out of his van, marker spray in hand ready to mark out the design. Dan and his colleague/sidekick Wayne, had quickly worked out the area and within an hour Dan was in a digger ripping up hard Malvern ground.

Lisa and I managed to source all the build materials, which, along with the beautiful sandstone paving kindly given to us by Global Stone, arrived in the afternoon. Dan and Wayne had all the foundations laid by the end of the day, ready for the paving to go down tomorrow morning.

As we have all travelled quite far: I from Northampton, Lisa from Bristol and Dan and Wayne from Midsummer Norton, accommodation has been laid on for the team. We have a great caravan from E&L Caravan Hire of Worcestershire, with 4 separate births and all the mod-cons you would need. After an evening at a nice local pub, Lisa on the cola, me on the ale and the Somerset Boys on the cider (of course!), it was back to the caravan for an early night. Dan wanted to make sure he would be the first contractor on site tomorrow morning; we’ll see.