Don't you just love beach art.  Can't beat it.  It brings back all the feelings of holiday.  Dunwich Beach, Mummy, Daddy, Daughter.  Fab!

I love this piece.  Its been sitting on the side in the utility room at my Dad's house for many a year now.  In my view, it would be just at home in an art gallery or on its own shelf in a very contemporary house, perhaps up-lit from below to exaggerate the wonderful detail work along the top edge - it would create great shadows.  It was made by my exceptionally talented stepmother, or Belle-mere as we are in the habit of calling her.  She has many artistic talents, but her pottery pieces are her best and most suitably typify her character.  Exuberant, funny, creative, daring to be different.  We are lucky to have her.  Thanks Dad!

The incredible edible Hampton Court!

I haven’t visited the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show for over 10 years.  Not something a garden designer should be proud of, but there are just so many shows to visit and I have to say, I wasn’t that taken with Hampton Court on my last visit.  I have a very limited amount of time available to catch up with the trends and the list of shows and real gardens that I want to see in my lifetime is as long as your arm, so something has to give.  I was lured this year by my friend Melissa Jolly though, a local garden designer who created one of the concept gardens, for which Hampton Court is now widely known.

Despite my reservations, I had a great day and if you are at all interested in gardening, rather than garden design (which is much more Chelsea’s remit), Hampton Court is very much the show to visit.

What I went for though was the gardens.  Hampton is a very different animal to the likes of the Chelsea Flower Show.  Chelsea is a garden design mecca; showcasing what we really ‘should’ want to have in our gardens these days, what is hot and what is around the corner in terms of styles and trends.  Hampton Court is more about widening the appeal of horticulture and gardening than providing cutting edge garden design as the main focus; the gardens on show are far more deep thinking than those at Chelsea and in the main they are looking to communicate a message rather than be uber-current.  I really like this considered approach and it’s fascinating to observe how these gardens impact on the audience as you can really stand and stare at Hampton Court, rather than being swept along by the crowd as you are at Chelsea, with barely a moment or the space to reflect and absorb what you are looking at.  This year there was a distinctly philanthropic feel to the show with a variety of charity gardens each shouting out their own message in an attempt to steal limelight.

The RHS had provided their own themes as well – an amazing Alice in Wonderland themed Scarecrow competiton for local schools provided a jolly display of weird and wonderful creations that would have been totally at home in the Lewis Carroll story, but may have been too beautiful to frighten away the birds.  The Poet’s Gardens were a little bit too abstract for my liking, poetry is such an introspective art, it’s hard to bring the essence of it out into a garden environment.

The overriding theme of the show though was edible and subsistence gardening.  Something that is going to become the focus of our gardening future.  My theory is that we are very shortly going to become acutely aware that we cannot continue to eat the way we do – fast, fatty, fakely and from far away – it’s not sustainable, it’s not affordable and it’s not local; it’s not good for you and it’s not good for this country, on many levels.  So what are the options then and how do we fit food prodution into our already crowded environments and daily lives?

The RHS provided ample food for thought at the show with their ‘Grow Your Own’ Garden and marquee.  A veritable feast of edible delights to feed the mind, the eye and the stomach.  It was a beautiful display and showed the diversity of what you can grow and how, from space saving espaliered fruit trees to vegetables suitable for a shady corner.  And it definitely wasn’t reminiscent of the allotments of bygone years, with a few sprouts dotted here and there.  It was a proper garden; organised, beautiful and abundantly productive.  It did take pride of place in the show though, a whopping 1,850sqm of space in fact, not the smallest of gardens, but hugley informative and educational all the same.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was my favourite garden of the show.  The Burgon and Ball ‘5-a-Day’ garden was one of the smaller gardens.  The designers crammed a delightful garden into a tiny space, but did it with style and wit too.  The result was a charming garden on many levels; they used the floor, the walls and the stairs (including under them!).  Every single bit of available space was used efficiently and the attention to detail was exquisite.  Rainwater storage tanks were fitted in under the steps which you would not have known were there had the designers not allowed for a couple of subtle portholes for show-goers to peek through.  A wonderful pull-out potting table and compost bins were integrated under the steps too, using up every inch of space.  Herbs and salad leaves were grown as green walls; the ‘deep bed system’ which allows for closer growing proximities and therefore bigger yields for crops was used on the floor as raised beds and in planters on the edge of the stairs to double up as a balustrade and prevent you falling into the garden below!  You could even eat the table – it featured a central trough sunk into its middle which was planted with herbs and edible flowers so you could dress your own salad at the table!  This was a gem of a garden which deserved its Gold Medal award and should really have been Best in Show.

If you haven’t been before, I would really urge you to visit the show next year.  Not only is it a festival of delights and dramas but it also highlights the importance of gardening in an attractive and simple way and if you are at all frightened of getting your hands dirty and don’t know how to start off in the garden, the RHS has developed the educational side of things over the years and this has grown into a non-intimidating, friendly and fun part of the show.

Get it in your diary for 2012!