I spent the day yesterday volunteering on the early build stage of a show garden designed by Caroline Tatham. Caroline’s garden is titled: 'A Brave New World of Beauty' and will be featured at the Malvern Autumn Festival 2014 at the end of September.

It was fascinating to see the early stages of a show garden build, particularly as this garden will be moved at the end of the festival, put on the back of a lorry and taken down the M5 to the Cheltenham Literary Festival which is in early October. In order for the garden to be transferable, Caroline has cleverly designed it to be entirely housed within a wooden box, which in my mind looks something like a cutlery tray. The different parts of ‘the tray’ are to be filled with the various elements of the design, (Below). Part of my day was spent shovelling topsoil into the different compartments.

Anyone who has followed the coverage of the various RHS garden festivals will have heard about some of the tricks of the trade used by the designers and landscape contractors to get the Show Gardens looking pristine. As the gardens need to look good at exactly the right moment a huge amount of preparation and planning goes into both the design and build. Seeing the bare bones of the build made it abundantly clear how much clever design and showmanship goes into even the foundational and unseen parts of the garden.

The picture below shows how the hedges are created by combining individual pre-packaged units of four grouped shrubs. When a few of these units are aligned, they look like a healthy and well established hedge.

In the picture below the various trees, shrubs and perennials are all delivered and will be stored on site ready for planting. It is immediately striking how many plants there are for what is essentially a very small garden. Again this is all about creating a show. As a professional designer, my planting plans for ordinary domestic gardens and commercial landscapes take into consideration the effects of the long term growth of the plants. The plants are specifically spaced in the design, and on the ground, to allow room for the natural growth pattern that will occur over the following years. However, as a show garden needs to look established despite only being built within the preceding couple of weeks, the planting has to be substantially more dense and crowded to create the effect. In truth, if I were to plant in a similar way for a domestic garden it wouldn’t be long before many of the plants were struggling as they fight for light, water, nutrients and space. However this doesn’t matter with the show garden as immediately after the event the plants are all taken out again to be sold or used elsewhere.

I am looking forward to seeing the final display when completed next week and I am sure there will be no sign of these clever ‘tricks of the trade’ as Caroline and her team get the garden looking immaculate just in time for the show.  For more information of the Malvern Autumn Show 2014 and Caroline’s Feature Garden use the following link. www.threecounties.co.uk/malvernautumn/

As I am fascinated by this subject and interested in the showmanship and clever technical detail that goes into creating show gardens, I am planning on posting more in-depth features in the run up to Festival Season next year.