The Carrot and Kids Alternative Guide To Chelsea

I was given lots of good tips before setting off for Chelsea and those, together with some very out of character organisation, meant I had a perfect day.

So here are my tips, some of which you may have read before, some not, but all of which I will be referring to next year if this blog and Chelsea are still going strong:

• Get there for opening time at 8am. Probably thought of as a bit extreme by my nearest and dearest but I think it paid off. It meant getting up at 5am and finding myself eating an apple crumble cake and drinking coffee at Waterloo at 7.20am but it's not like I do it every day. It added to the excitement, the complete change of routine was invigorating and I got to see the gardens while standing shoulder to shoulder rather than four people deep.

• Head for the Grand Pavilion. Do this as soon as you get there and find the Garden Design Forum. There will be stewards standing outside clutching wads of tickets for talks throughout the day. There are only 150 places so first come first served. Do not listen to RHS volunteers who think the tickets are handed out just before the shows. Even if you think you're not interested in any of the subjects, grab a ticket anyway. You'll be glad of the sit-down.

• Don't bother collecting all the pamphlets given out at the gardens: I did and I could have easily found the information on the internet. Plus it saves a few trees.

• If in doubt follow somone: Actually this is probably rubbish advice but I found it easy to spot the ladies on the tube heading to Chelsea so, not knowing the exact route, I followed them. However I was in front so I had to do a fair bit of glancing over my shoulder. This copy cat philosphy also directed me to the stewards clutching tickets for the talk and to the correct bus stop on the way home.

• Take a hanky. Take lots of hankies. Nobody tells you this but by the afternoon ninety per cent of visitors are sneezing. And a bit snotty. And rubbing their eyes. Pollen falls from the trees like confetti and even I, who never gets hayfever, was sneezing and had sore eyes by the end.

• Take a handy cart on wheels: Victoria has already written about these but it's handy to know about them. I didn't so by the time I got home I had arms like a gorilla. Seasoned Breakdown participants obviously knew the score. I bought a beautiful mosaic lantern and a wrought iron pot holder for a wall and I would have loved something other than my tired arms to cart them home.

• Don't bother with the Breakdown: I did and I'm not entirely sure it was worth it. Rather stupidly I bought three Ivory Queen aliums for £9 (and got one thrown in for free) but they were small and got easily crushed in my bag. Before I'd even left the Grand Pavilion two had been beheaded. Those triumphantly sporting giant ones home fared much better, I reckon. I also paid £5 for a large-ish salvia which is not dead. Yet. I wasn't after a bargain (I am rubbish at mad, busy bargain hunting, obviously) but I wanted a souvenir for my garden. I like gardens that tell a story.
  

• Go for comfy clothes every time: I did see a few glamour pusses who looked like they were dressed for a wedding, all heels and floaty dresses. I clomped around in my very ugly but deeply comfy crocs, tee-shirt, cardi, kagool tied around my waist (my dad told me showers were in store) and jeans. The jean pockets were handy for holding rail card, talk card and some loose change. Not sure where the glamorous people stored stuff like that as they all sported teeny tiny bags. My handbag was my wonderful Crumpler camera bag which has many very stiff, loud velcro pockets that I thought I would surely hear any would-be pickpocket.

Oh and just one more piece of advice: expect crowds. I did and they didn't bother me. I honestly can say I barely noticed them, such was my blissful state. State of mind, I think, counts for everything.

Ideas I Am Totally Going to Steal from Chelsea

Another Chelsea post I'm afraid. But in my defence this is going to serve as a depository for all my ideas. I did try notebooks but I end up losing them. So, ideas I'm taking away from Chelsea include:

• Grass roofs. I saw them on bins and on a funky chicken house and run. Actually I'm nicking the idea for the chicken run too. Including the vibrant paint. Well, maybe not that exact colour.

• Next is the living wall in the Children's Society Garden. That is so clever, the only trouble is I'm not sure where I'd put it. I will obviously have to think about that one a bit more.

• The use of willow hurdles to edge beds. Actually, the use of raised beds in gardens for plants and flowers, not just veg, instead of slug-friendly beds at slug height.

• The tiny palm trees, succulent planted hillside, the hillside itself complete with a concrete pipe to crawl through all from the Marshall's children's garden.

• Sunken trampolines. I know, this is cheating somewhat as there were no actual sunken trampolines anywhere but I went to a talk by Bunny Guinness and she extolled their vitues. If it's good enough for Bunny.....

• A tipee that swings from a tree and can take up to 22 stone in weight and can be used as a swing, hidey hole or a mini trampoline. I saw these on sale and want one. Maybe by the time the children have left home I will have saved enough (they cost £299!) and by that time I could have it all to myself...

• The willow heart on the gate in the Solstice Garden.

• The watering rota board in the edible playground garden. Also the standard bay tree in the herb garden circle and the beautiful raised beds. Well, they were beautiful to me.

• The Good Gifts garden was a beach scene with a clever (too clever for me really) water feature that emulated the tide washing into a little inlet. It was so relaxing to listen to but involved pumps and buckets and so one for Hubby methinks.

• Tibetan cherries. I loved these and am now thinking about how I can have them in my front garden, which totally needs redesigning before the beautiful tulip bulbs I ordered arrive in October.

I think that's enough to be getting on with for now.

My Favourite Gardens at Chelsea

Thank goodness for digital cameras and thank goodness for mine and the 200 plus photos I took at the Chelsea Flower Show on Saturday.

I have looked at them a lot to remind myself of a perfect day and of the gardens I loved the best. But if I was to remember, without technology, the gardens that stayed with me were mostly small with a lot of elements that I found inspirational or do-able, one day in the far off future.

My top two favourites were Adam Frost's A Welcome Sight which won best Urban Garden (I think) and a gold and Mark Gregory's The Children Society Garden. I surprised myself liking these so much as they weren't on my dog-eared list of Gardens I Must See.

But love them I did, partly because they were both front gardens which I think are so much harder and paradoxically easier to design when faced with them at home. Harder because the space is usually so much smaller but easier because you don't have to take washing lines and climbing frames into consideration and you can go a bit wild (much like decorating downstairs loos).

In Adam's I loved the planting, the materials used for the landscaping, the three little pots lined up by the front door, the beautiful Tibetan Cherries with reddish shiny bark and the clever water feature which started off at the front door quietly dripping from metal spirals down into metal troughs leading to small pools.

Adam's ethos behind it, designing a front garden because no-one ever does, and making something that encourages socialising with neighbours and therefore adding to people's sense of community, also added something special for me.

Mark's garden was just full of brilliant ideas to copy; the living wall (of which I have downloaded the planting plan), grass-roofed bin store, the bench with the hard-to-spot outside tap and the unique bike store, which admittedly I wouldn't want on the front of my house but still, it was clever.

My other choices are on the whole rather boring I'm afraid. I loved the gardens that offered something to me, namely ideas to steal. Obviously I didn't want the gardens to be too realistic; I didn't want to be looking at a square patch of lawn bordered by narrow, mean borders.

Real Life by Brett was charming and could easily be replicated. I loved the pots, the paving, the different seating options but was slightly less keen on the prettified shed (no net curtains! No!).

And of course, vegetable gardens had a special place in my heart. I loved the willow hurdle raised beds of the Daylesford Organic Summer Solstice garden, the willow heart on the rustic gate and the outside fireplace. Now what I wouldn't give for an outside fireplace. I didn't know I wanted one until I saw this!

I loved, loved, loved the Dorset Cereals Edible Playground and am going to totally steal the idea of a whiteboard listing the watering rota. I just need somewhere visible to place it at school. It was brilliantly done; the welly boots kicked off by the classroom door made you feel the children had just left the garden.
Elements of other gardens will live on in my memory. I loved the white planting at the top of the George Harrison From Life to Life garden, the moss covered secret garden Midori No Tibera and if I were a wealthy cafe owner I'd be asking Diarmuid Gavin to move his entire Oceanico Garden to my place.

Surprisingly I didn't love the Marshall's Garden Kids Really Want. I tried as I was expecting it to be a favourite but for some reason I was disappointed. I liked elements of it - the large rocks for climbing and to make a cave, the shallow pond, the tiny palm trees, the succulent lawn on the hillside - but that's okay. I think there are plenty of ideas there to steal!

Now only 363 days to go until the next Chelsea Flower Show - hopefully.

I-Spy Sunday

A few snaps not from my garden this time but from the gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show. Plenty more to come over the next week.
Such delicious posts as My Favourite Gardens, The Carrot and Kids Alternative Guide to Chelsea and Designer Ideas I'm Nicking for My Garden are all in the pipeline (ie.my head). I've turned into a Chelsea Bore (everyone here long wandered off before I got to the end of my 200 plus photos slideshow. Tsk) but really it was The Best Day Ever.