The Mathiasella bupleuroides ‘Green Dream’ was stunning and is one of my favourite plants. It likes full sun to partial shade, but was looking so much better in the full sun in Sheffield than in my dismal partial shade in Manchester. Mathiasella has striking papery lime green bracts that dangle like alien bells. It looked beautiful in Ulf Nordfjell’s garden in Chelsea in 2009 planted with Carex muskingumensis.

In this garden I teamed the mathiasella with the evergreen grass Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldtau’ to provide a lovely green setting for it to rise through (the frothy deschampsia flowers come later on), and Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata ‘Black Barlow’ as I love the contrast between the lime green and the deep purpley-black of the aquilegia. The aquilegia wasn’t out yet but it won’t be long.

Other April winners were Tulipa ‘Curly Sue’ (put in for my Client, Sue, and pictured above) which looked striking against the Heuchera ‘Chocolate Ruffles‘. Yum.

I’m planning my next visit for when the alliums are out!

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What I didn’t realise was how tough it would be raising the rest of the sponsorship and thought I could do it in three weeks… I couldn’t!

I am, however, brimming with ideas for next year and have already started talking to possible collaborators and sponsors. Watch this space…

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• Deadlines deadlines deadlines
• An RHS Show Garden
• RHS Show Cardiff

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He didn’t disappoint. I’m very familiar with many of the images of his schemes, but he also showed photographs of his planting plans and explained his progression over the years, from block planting schemes, to drifts, to more complex layering of plantings designed using  layers of tracing paper to represent the drifts containing a combination of plants, with layers of trace over dotted to show the perennials criss crossing over the drifts, as he did for the Highline in New York.

Here are some photographs I’ve taken of his planting designs in Trentham Gardens, Stoke on Trent, and Potters Fields in London. I particularly like the Rivers of Grass (Molinia) in Trentham (you might even notice that Piet has favourited this photo!) and this is a piece I wrote for the Landscape Institute North West website about the Noel Kingsbury workshop we had there.

Lots of inspiration here for my own planting.Working more with drifts of combinations of grasses as well as block plantings. Lovely.

Also speaking was James Hitchmough, Professor of Horticultural Ecology at Sheffield University. James is a fantastic speaker and amongst many other projects spoke about the incredible wildflower meadows he has created with Nigel Dunnet for the The London Olympic Park 2012 Gardens. I shall write a separate journal entry about this… if you’re interested subscribe to my journal on the right.

A wonderful event organised by the Landscape Institute Yorkshire and Humber Branch.

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We started in her studio where I grimaced tensely into the camera, so she took me into her garden, put me straight at ease and snapped away while we chatted and laughed. It was a really fun session and I would recommend her to anyone.

I’m hoping her magic photoshop skills can erase the shadows under my eyes…

Update: I’ve had the proofs back and they look great!

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First stop Chris Beardshaw, his garden Urban Oasis was designed in consultation with community workers and landscape architects at Groundwork and in collaboration with the RHS. It was lovely with beautiful planting (see photo above). He’s taking a different garden to every RHS Show this year, blimey! I quizzed Chris about the planting and he gave me some great advice: make sure you’ve planted three to four days before judging so the plants have time to relax; and, if you’ve bought the plants rather than borrowed them, then plant them out of the pots, again they relax more and even grow a little.

Then I met Harry, designer of Naturalistic his first show garden and it won best in show! It was a lovely garden, with stunning curved dry stone walls and delicate planting. His garden was 11m  x 7m so just marginally bigger than mine, and it looked quite big! The tone of lilac in the dry stone wall was also in the blossom of the tree just beyond the garden boundary; the perfect borrowed landscape.

I also met the lovely Lucinda from the RHS who I’ve spoken with on the phone and we talked about my finding sponsorship in such a short space of time. I haven’t got long to raise a large amount of money, and there is a compelling argument which says I should postpone this garden and do it next year. I could volunteer to help on a show garden in the meantime and gain some valuable experience. I feel in my bones that this is the sensible option. We’ll see.

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• An RHS Show Garden
• A day off
• What’s in a name?

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I hit send on my application just before midnight on the final day with seconds to spare. PHEW.

No resting for me though. I’ve since spent a lot of time on the phone trying to get sponsorship or sponsorship in kind. If only I had more time…

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• An RHS Show Garden

Read more on Carolyn's Journal .

I didn’t exactly find them myself… Richard Sneesby, my tutor who I spoke to earlier in the week, gave me the details of his friend Paul Richards, a garden designer based in the north west who has designed some beautiful show gardens. I emailed him with my usual “help me please I don’t know what I’m doing…” and he sent me a lovely email in return, warning me that I would have many sleepless nights ahead, offering me any further advice I may need, and providing me with details of two good nurseries, one Ladybrook Nursery in Bramhall where I am to speak with Janine, and the other Brentwood Moss Nursery near Irlam where I am to speak with Catherine. And I’m to mention his name.

So I do… and tomorrow I’m meeting Catherine and on Monday I’m meeting Janine. I am now over my one week deadline and really hoping that the RHS grant my wish to have my deadline extended until Monday. I can’t write a planting list without knowing what the nursery will have available and I haven’t got all my costs yet. Oh yes, and I still have to do a presentation sketch and plan for the garden and find a name for it!

I keep thinking of names, snorting derisively and abandoning them.  Reflections, Transitions, Contemplation, The Journey, A Place to Think. I have worked hard to keep the design full of subtle references to the theatre and hope that it will not come across as heavy handed. I want it to truly work as a garden. All other messages can be layered over this garden. It is a theatre with a stage yes, but it is most definitely a garden. So I’m going to call it Life Stages.

This is very different to working as a landscape architect, which I also love, but this feels so much closer to theatre design. It’s so direct and hands on. I’m meeting so many lovely people and I’m really excited about this happening.

I think I might be enjoying myself!

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• Calling, calling, calling…
• Brainstorming with Rupert, something about stone, and inspiration in the pub
• An RHS Show Garden

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Katie is a fantastic garden designer and I wanted to pick her brains as she has loads of show garden experience at Chelsea. She gave me tons of advice over lunch, particularly about planting. When I left she filled my car boot with Miscanthus and Sanguisorba menziesii… a garden designer’s party bag!

Next stop back to Pershore to meet Simon at Ready Hedge who everyone I had met over the last couple of days seemed to know well. Simon was great and we walked around with Rupert to see what was available. If only I had given him a couple of months more notice I would have had so much more to choose from (where have I heard that before, only every day for the last week!) but there are a few great options available and I’m excited again.

To conclude the tales of my little voyage I then broke down on the M6. Ah dear, but I’m finally home and I’ve had a well deserved glass of wine in the bath. Lots to do tomorrow.

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• Brainstorming with Rupert, something about stone, and inspiration in the pub
• A day at the drawing board
• A ball of string

Read more on Carolyn's Journal .

The afternoon was fun too, looking at vast quantities of stone with Asil, Hardscape‘s Technical Manager,  at their storage and distribution centre at Long Marston near Stratford-upon-Avon.  I also met Lucy who runs Stockscape, Hardscape’s sister company, who supply hard landscaping materials to professional garden designers. She’s a garden designer herself and gave me lots of ideas and information about suppliers. I then spent a lovely evening in the pub with them both. Hardscape are definitely one of the most sociable companies I know!

Inspiration struck in the pub in the form of the lampshades. I’d been toying with the idea of pivoting panels in the structure on the decking in the garden. Spinning the panels would be like changing the scenery in a show. I wasn’t sure what would go on the panels though. Scene painting on gauze perhaps? The lampshades had scenes from Shakespeare’s plays on (we were in Stratford after all) and I suddenly thought that the panels could be perspex or polycarbonate with an extract of a script etched onto them. Lovely and light and transparent, layers of planting would be visible through the panels. Scenes could be from plays that feature gardens or maybe just a single tree (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Cherry Orchard, Waiting for Godot).

Could be just the thing…

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• A day at the drawing board
• A day off

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I have a sketch, which is enough to show people and to talk my ideas through. Tomorrow I’m driving to Pershore in the morning to meet Rupert from Keyscape to talk about whether they can build the garden for me, then to Stratford upon Avon to talk to my friends at Hardscape about supplying some gorgeous natural stone, then on to Taddington near Stow on the Wold to my friend Katie Guillebaud who has planting design experience at Chelsea.

I’m going on tour!

Here are some posts related to this one, or you can read all my journal posts:

• Design day (or a little displacement activity)
• Calling, calling, calling…

Read more on Carolyn's Journal .