Moving swiftly on

Well it's been ages since my last post, so I thought I'd fill you in on what I've been doing. Now, where was I? Ah yes, just about to head off to Hampton Court to try and water my wilting garden design seedling.

We had a great day out. I really like the Hampton Court Show, it's so much nicer than Chelsea - more relaxed, more room, generally a nicer atmosphere I think. My Mum and I met up with Claire and Phil, and during the course of the day also met Raina, Dan and Martin. I took loads of pictures, and here are a few:



This was Rik's garden - beautiful planting and I loved the silver ball thingy! I loved it!



Here's one of the Hadlow College garden - Kent CaCO3, designed by Fern and Heidi. It's not a very good picture, and doesn't do the garden justice. Apparently Joe Swift thought it was fantastic!



1001 things to do with root vegetables.




Can't remember which one this was, but liked the picture. I think it was the outside kitchen. I really liked that idea. I've been doing a lot of barbecuing because it's so hot and I'm getting fed up with trekking backwards and forwards to the kitchen, because you know that just when you sit down you've forgotten the salt and pepper, or the knives, or something like that, and actually having the kitchen outside makes a lot of sense if this whole global warming climate change is really here to stay.


The image uploader seems to have gone on strike so I can't add anymore. I'll try again tomorrow. There'll be another exciting instalment on Hampton Court - I went back on the Monday after the show to help Fern and Heidi dismantle the garden. I thought that, apart from being a helpful sort of a thing to do, it would be really interesting to see the behind the scenes stuff after the show was over. I'll tell you all about it next time!

This is the life

Isn't this great? I'm taking a few weeks to recover before I start thinking about what to do next and it's just lovely.

We went to Ascot on 23 June, here we are in our finery just about to leave:



The new Grandstand is awesome - a beautiful building. I don't know who designed it, but it's like an airport - big and airy and full of natural light:


I found myself checking out the materials used, the fixings, the concrete, wondering how it was all put together, thinking about the design of each and every aspect. Sad, that's what I call it. I even took some photos, but I'm too ashamed to show them.

It was a lovely day - saw the Queen, that's Prince Philip behind her. It's amazing the lack of security there - they searched my bag at entrance (it's about 2" square) but Tim could have been hiding an AK47 under his tailcoat - there were no metal detectors or anything like that, and Her Majesty was only a short distance away from us. Lucky we're not terrorists.



These events always make me laugh - at the start everyone looks so wonderful, the men all done up like dogs' dinners and the ladies in their ridiculous hats - everything is so refined and demure. But at the end of the day, after drinking your own bodyweight in champagne and losing the contents of your TESSA on a 50:1 outsider in the last race, it's like carnage. People staggering around, hats all over the place, shrieking women with no shoes on, harrassed officials trying to herd everyone off the premises. I was laughing my head off, because I'd managed to stay reasonably sober. I even saw a man pushing a supermarket trolley full of drunken women towards the car park. They just couldn't make it. I don't know, youngsters nowadays, just don't have the stamina necessary for these occasions.

Tuesday 27th found me at Lords for the Twenty Twenty match between Surrey and Middlesex. I'm not normally a cricket fan - dull dull dull are the three words that spring to mind when I think of cricket, but the Twenty Twenty matches are quite good because they don't last very long. It started at 5.30 and was all over by 8.30. Now that's the sort of cricket I can put up with. No photos of that I'm afraid - but there wasn't much to see to be honest.

Wednesday 28th and off to London for a visit to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Interesting stuff. Some really good models and images by architecture students - and a fantastic sculpture outside by Damien Hirst. And more free champagne, which is always nice.

You may have noticed a lack of anything garden designy in my life currently. Well, that's completely deliberate. I finished the year never wanting to see another garden again, hating plants, hating materials, hating the whole bloody industry. I had had my fill of it.

But a soupcon of curiosity is slowly coming back to life now, a feeling that maybe I will one day actually want to use what I've learnt.

Tonight I'm off to see New Landscapes 2006, the exhibition by the Landscape Architect graduates at the Menier Gallery in Southwark Street and tomorrow I'm taking my Mum to the Hampton Court flower show, so hopefully these events will ease me back into the scary world of garden design.

Hope everyone's having fun - see you on 24 July, if I don't bump into you at Hampton Court!