I’m off to the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show next week, as a

visitor. The sense of relief and excitement I feel at the prospect of

being a visitor rather than an exhibitor is verging on the absurd. It

seems so refreshingly easy, to simply attend, with responsibility for

nothing more than a rather pretty two-inch square guest pass on a pink

vinyl wristband.

What a contrast to my last experience of Hampton Court, when for more

than half a year I stepped into the strenuous world of those who create

the gardens at these big RHS flower shows.

I have always loved gardening, but only as a keen amateur, without the

experience, funds or time to do anything more to my garden than keep

the lawn at bay and create the occasional flowerbed (usually with

generous cuttings from Peat Oberon – “Tell Lucy: “The hellebores are

coming””). It had always been a source of frustration to me that garden

sculpture at Fire and Iron could not realistically be shown to its best

advantage, and I always aspired to creating ideal sites, beautifully

planted and lit, for individual pieces of work.

I was discussing this with two of Fire and Iron’s exhibitors, Lynn and

Simon Mahoney, when the idea of showing their work within a garden

setting at Hampton Court first surfaced. I investigated further. My

first surprise was that garden spaces at the RHS shows are not

available to be booked and paid for, as is the case with trade stands.

There is no charge for the space; garden designs are submitted, and

accepted or rejected by a panel of judges. I decided to learn more

about the application process by submitting a design featuring Lynn and

Simon’s work.

I am not a professional garden designer, and I wasn’t expecting this first design

and proposal to be accepted. I assumed that I would need to learn a

great deal more, and keep on applying for several years, to stand a

chance of getting in one day. The photocopied image I sent to the RHS was far too

bright – the A3 printer I use locally was playing up, and produced a

glorious technicolour version of my intended colour scheme; with the

December deadline imminent, there was no time to rectify this, so off

it went with the late post… (If you’re wondering why I was sending a photocopy

rather than the original ink and watercolour image, I was so certain of failure at

this stage that I wanted to at least retain my artwork).

Christmas came and went, and one morning in January I received a letter

informing me that the Fire & Iron garden design had been accepted. I

remember feeling slightly delighted and hugely alarmed; with a budget

of nought pence, and plenty of other work in hand, I had unwittingly

embarked on a crash course in garden design and production, and was

acutely aware that I was to the gardening world what cold bent

scrollwork is to blacksmiths!

Hampton Court is only a few miles from Fire & Iron, but as a

seemingly endless stream of information packs, seminar details, request

forms, compliance documents and passes started to flow, I quickly

realised that there was much more to this than a few conveniently local

trips in my car. The first seminar was in Birmingham… The RHS keeps a

very close eye on the progress of all gardens, to ensure a good overall

show, and I will never forget being told that “You are being judged

from the moment you submit your application.” We were also constantly

reminded that the show is a FLOWER show, and is judged as such.

I badly needed a spare July to appear from nowhere and remind me what

flowers look good in England at that time of year. Lynn specialises in

making copper butterflies, and on the advice of my gardener friend

Nick, I had already chosen Gaura lindheimeri (“Whirling Butterflies”)

as my feature plant. I had through necessity kept the whole scheme

flexible beyond that, finding it very difficult in the midst of winter

to picture the best plants of hot midsummer.

I had an impression (from television, perhaps?) that RHS garden

creators nurtured all of their plants themselves from scratch to

precisely-timed perfection. With unfenced grounds, no greenhouses and a

colony of flower-loving deer, I knew from day one that we were up

against it. The first Gaura plants arrived (dormant) from Italy. As we

waited patiently for signs of life, I finally accepted that all sixty

plants were not dormant, but dead. Gaura Batch II flourished, but alas

too soon. The flowers were a delight in early June, but long gone by

July. Gaura Batch III was fine. Lesson? Never name a garden after one

flower, and certainly not one specific variety of that flower (I had

called the garden “Whirling Butterflies” in all the paperwork), and

apart from safe bets, and unless you have plant-supplying friends in

high places, run with what is looking terrific in the nurseries the

week before. I have come to see metal as extraordinarily stable and

compliant in the main – once “fixed”, it’s just there for the duration.

You can arrange your picture, and freeze it once you’re happy. Living,

changing plants are far more difficult to deal with, and far more

unpredictable. I soon regarded the plants as part of our team, to be

nurtured and worked with, capable at any moment of coming good or going

wrong. I loved this aspect of the garden, however, and looking back it

was the hands-on planting and tending that I enjoyed most, which is

exactly as it should be.

We were lucky enough to have the space at Fire & Iron to gradually

set up the whole garden in the car park. This really helped us to

visualise how it would look once in place at Hampton Court. Because the

whole point of the garden was to showcase the whimsical sculptures of

Lynn and Simon, both of whom produce their sculptures in varying sizes,

I had designed the garden as a trompe l’oeil perspective garden, with

the largest sculptures in the foreground and the tiniest versions at

the back, the natural landscape around them scaled to suit each size

(big tree at the front, Bonsai version at the back, etc.). I

commissioned extra pieces in varying sizes from other Fire & Iron artists, such as

the foxes and fungi, to help the sense of scale. I wanted the overall

effect to be like a children’s book illustration – “over the hills and

far away”.

I marked out the raised foreground with pallets, which we then

replaced with stronger frames made from mild steel box section. We

built a log pile, bolting carefully-chosen logs together to create a

fixed feature that could be moved on a pallet truck as a whole piece. I

was then able to work on this for months, encouraging moss, lichen and

ivy to make it look settled.

The shoestring budget meant that we had to think creatively, and the

foreground was planted abundantly with brambles, Baby’s Tears, St.

John’s Wort, ivy, periwinkles and ferns – all dug up from my garden, potted,

fed and tweaked to glossy green fitness and trained to intertwine in

advance for a convincing ‘been there forever’ impression.

I agonised over the surface of the path for many weeks, wanting

something striking and unusual that the judges wouldn’t have seen

before. The solution was right there in front of me all along, and it

was free. Clinker from the forge. Beautiful, colourful, sparkling

clinker, with its purples, reds and shiny blacks, was of course used

historically to make tough garden paths. It was easy to grade from

large chunks in the foreground, to glittering dust right at the back.

Perfect.

We have a simple old cast iron gate post still standing at the back of

our garden, with one broken panel of estate railing still attached.

When I was at university in the early 80s, I studied the use of fake

ruins in nineteenth century landscape gardens, and here was a humble

version – a thing of purpose and pleasing design that had decayed and

fallen out of use, reminding us both of our heritage and our fragility.

I planned to dig it up and use it at the front of our RHS garden, and

return it afterwards, but it looked so incredibly settled, with its

attached railing embedded deeply in the trunk of a chestnut tree, so I

left it in peace. We made a new ‘old’ one – an exact copy, with rust

and moss – and then a tiny 120mm high replica for the ‘shoebox garden’

background.

I was sent a plan showing our pitch, and with the same blend of delight

and alarm I experienced when we were accepted, I noted that we had a

fantastic stand-alone plot right inside the main entrance. I can only

assume that the A3 printer error worked in my favour, and that the RHS

decided that ‘the really, really bright one’ would lift people’s mood

as they entered! My reaction was to urgently source brighter flowers to

make my original concept more like the submitted colourful entry.  I

was allowed to go on site at this stage and see the plot; it was a very

strange experience, visiting such a quiet, huge expanse of grass and

trees, with just a flat green plastic disc marking the spot where in a

few weeks we would take our place as a tiny part of such a huge,

bustling event.

As July came closer, what Peat Oberon describes as “the buggeration factor”

kicked in, and we all felt under extreme pressure. Major theft from our

site during Epsom Derby week knocked us for six, Nick’s truck (our

transport) had to be sold to pay bills, and the lovely man casting

Simon’s bronze heads was unwell and couldn’t work; an alternative

foundry that could finish the work was identified, but the cost was

prohibitive so the remaining heads were cast in iron, and delivered

unfinished at the eleventh hour for me to fill with car body filler and

match carefully to the bronze ones with paint. The copper ‘sky’ sample

looked awful, so we changed to sheets of stainless steel zizzed with

a sanding disc and riveted to five free-standing frames. Paperwork

demands from the RHS gathered pace – booking and paying for water

supplies, power supplies, signboards, gala tickets, car park passes;

risk assessing toxic plants; providing timber certificates; handling

media enquiries; designing and producing 13,000 brochures; planning

transport and van hire; sorting out mobile credit / debit card

facilities. I worked my normal six-day week in addition to all

this, and started to feel weary.

The gardens are built on the Hampton Court site over fourteen

consecutive days, culminating in judging on the afternoon of day

fourteen (Sunday) and again early on the morning of day fifteen

(Monday). This was a tough fortnight in terms of logistics and

travelling (overall, we did 17 return journeys in hired vans and 33 in

my estate car; we were stopped and searched by the police looking for

vans full of metalwork stolen from…… us!), but a strangely serene and

enjoyable one when it came to the actual task of building a garden. The

atmosphere on site for the first seven days was heavenly; the weather

was kind, as we worked quietly away under the trees and against a

backdrop of Tijou screens, met other gardeners and enjoyed the

camaraderie. Week two saw a sudden increase in activity as the trade

stands, show tents and catering facilities arrived. It was great to see

some familiar faces – Bex Simon, Jenny Pickford and Neil Lossock – and

to meet new friends like Michael Kusz.

The garden took shape, and we were ahead of schedule. As it neared

completion, I noticed that it ‘moved’ constantly – the leaves rustled

and the grass rippled and the flowers nodded; so used to static iron,

this took me by surprise. Local fauna moved in, too – a real fox made

itself a hollow in the meadow grass, and rooks took up residence on the

tips of the head sculptures, giving the whole garden a very dynamic

sinister edge.  I really liked these unexpected extra dimensions, and

the macabre birds were so perfect for the book illustration concept,

reminding me of those grisly nursery rhymes about beggar boys who put

you in their bags and the man on the stairs who isn’t there. Simon’s heads

are firmly-rooted and rather gloomy, in contrast to Lynn’s exuberant butterflies,

so live rooks perching on them were just the ticket.

It started to weigh on my mind that we were soon to be judged; I knew

that I had to give a two-minute presentation about the garden to the

panel of judges just prior to the Sunday judging, and for a couple of

days I had that driving test feeling in the pit of my stomach. With

hindsight, I was becoming exhausted, and almost deliriously obsessed

with learning the Latin names, soil preferences, origins, height and

spread of every plant in the garden. The name of the focal tree in the

foreground, the unusual Kolreuteria paniculata, just couldn’t find

itself even the smallest of spaces in my brain, and as I recited it in

vain a hundred times on each and every journey to and from the

showground, I became convinced that the judges would be drawn like a

magnet to this striking tree and would ask me all about it.

We were working on two public art jobs back at the ranch, and I can remember

my husband Adam very caringly lining up my paints and brushes ready for

me to fall in through the door late at night and start painting. Simultaneously, I

had judged an art competition at Combat Stress (the veterans’ mental health

service); my winner, from a vast array of quite brilliant artworks, was a strange,

small, quiet painting with horizontal washes of different greys. A tiny black

battleship was drawn with marker pen in the very centre, with smoke emerging.

At the bottom of all the grey was written in capital letters and the same black

marker pen: ALONE. It made my arms tingle, and I was drawn to it again and again

as I walked round the room looking at all the entries. I eventually decided that

this was my unorthodox First Prize recipient. The artist, Bones Bartlett, explained

that his painting depicted his experience of the bombing of the ship he served on

in the Falklands War, HMS Sheffield. Severely injured, Bones recalled the overwhelming

sense of being alone in a great mass of ocean: “I felt like no-one would ever come and

find us.” As I returned home from Hampton Court  late one weekday night, ready to start

painting, a huge square parcel greeted me on the doorstep. Bones had painted me a vast

version of the brilliant ‘ALONE’. I can’t explain just how much this incredible gift humbled

and inspired me.

The chance to place metal sculpture in a setting and promote Fire &

Iron’s artists had been my ambition in attempting an RHS presence; now

that judging loomed, I found myself secretly hoping that we might scrape

a bronze medal. I knew that expert eyes would find fault, but I hoped that

we had done just enough to get a seal of approval, and the opportunity to

come back another year (there was an unnerving role of wire and wicker

fencing leaning beside our garden throughout – I wondered whether this

was for Plan B [i.e. see whether Fire & Iron can pull this off, and if it’s too

ghastly, clear them from the showground and roll the fence across the

gap!]).

The judges came, asked Nick and I all about the striking tree (“Kolreuteria paniculata”

I said, effortlessly) and went on their way. Knowing they would return very early

the following morning, I was back at dawn to dead-head the flowers, kick the sleeping

fox out of bed, polish the sky and pick off any leaves that had dropped from

the trees overnight. Press day followed this early morning activity,

and then straight into a thunder storm and gala night. My assistant at

Fire & Iron, Georgina, who so ably kept the business running while I

was up at Hampton Court, joined us for the evening. We wandered round

the showground, discussing how a bronze medal would be the icing on the cake,

and returned to see Adam, Lynn, Simon, Nick and his wife waving a

laminated card at us. “Did we get one?” I remember asking, and the card

was flipped over to reveal a gold medal.

Gold had never even entered my dreams as a possibility. I’m such a

believer in the ‘taking part’ rather than the winning, but I confess it

was a great feeling, and it melted the tiredness away. A friend had

said to me wittily a month or so earlier: “If you do get a medal, you

can say that you were not constrained by any knowledge or expertise”.

She had a good point – in an age of classy, urban chic havens, the

judges praised the originality of our garden; with no training, I had

scrutinised the rulebook in terms of the judging, ensuring that every

blade of grass was perfect and every requirement was satisfied, but I

hadn’t been aware of any established rules of garden design. One judge

said to me that he loved the way I had disregarded the rules and turned

the structure round – taller at the front than at the back. Trust me,

if I had known that there was a RULE about this, I really wouldn’t have

dared to break it!

The interest in our garden suddenly escalated, and it was featured on

television. We were up with the lark every morning for the following

six days, to tweak the garden ready for the public and then stand and

talk and hand out brochures all day. Storms came and went, mudbaths

were cleared by JCBs, the sun shone. As the final Sunday approached, I

learned another new lesson – that gardens are ripped up and gone in an

instant; the plants are sold off to the public in a frantic last hour,

and suddenly all that is left to show for six months of hard grind is a

savaged heap of soil and debris. I found this very sad; ironwork goes

up, and is there for decades, perhaps forever. Show gardens, like

floristry, are beautiful for a while, and then suddenly over.

As the show closed, we then had five days to take everything away,

clear our plot back to its original state and finally return to our

normal lives.

Was it worth it? Yes. If we had done it as a short-term, one-off

venture, hoping to make money at the event from sales of metal

sculpture, we would have failed spectacularly. We sold some stainless

steel mushrooms at the show itself, but that was all. The crowd in

front of our garden was often five deep, enthusiastically photographing

the garden, but they were not buying. (Our prices ranged from £16 for a

single mushroom, to many thousands of pounds for the largest bronze

head).

In terms of raising the profile of Fire & Iron and our artists, however, the whole

experience has proved invaluable. Our presence at Hampton Court led

directly to a Royal visit to Fire and Iron, and numerous marketing and

networking  opportunities. The gold medal carries weight, and is

greatly appreciated by the general public – they know what it is, and

value the Royal Horticultural Society and its medal system hugely.

Since we won the medal, Lynn’s sales have rocketed. Simon’s heads are

more difficult, because they are high value and were tricky to sell in

the 2009 recession. We handed out most of the 13,000 brochures during the

show, and that alone has noticeably increased footfall to the gallery.

The RHS featured film footage of our garden on their website for twelve

months. We are able to feature the gold medal in adverts, on our

website, in our literature, on signage and on our letters / e-mails. We

now have sculptures in leading designer Jill Fenwick’s garden at

Wisley, and have completed two professional garden design projects. We

have designed and produced ironwork for other Hampton Court and Chelsea

gardens, on the recommendation of the RHS. It feels as if we have put a

large building block in place, upon and around which we can construct

our future plans.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. It was an utterly exhausting process

but a privilege of an experience start to finish. I am full of ideas,

and longing to do something new and, I hope, much better, perhaps in

collaboration. I’m quite happy to wait for a while, and plan the next

one thoroughly over a year or two, or even three or more. The log pile we made

for the last garden, having been discarded round the back on our

return, looks terrific now that it has matured and rotted for a few

extra seasons. Nature won’t be hurried.