I’ve got a client…. a real client… a client with a garden…. a client who wants me to come up with a design for her garden. I AM BEYOND EXCITED……..
A couple of weeks ago I went to a terraced house in Hampton Hill to meet its owner Jill Watson. Jill is a good friend of my good friend Hilary. Jill wants somebody to help her turn her garden into a space that lives up to the inside of her house. And the person she wants to help her is …. ME.
It feels like this job is made for me. I know this part of the world really well – Jill’s house is only a mile or so away from the house I lived in when we were first married, the house where my son James was born. And it’s just up the road from Hampton Court where I’m doing my course.
And Jill’s house is lovely – inside it feels airy and spacious with a real sense flow. The materials used are beautiful, the colours restful and welcoming. The garden is south west facing and – on Friday morning in the spring sunshine – surrounded by trees bursting into blossom.
Doing this course at KLC is very much like trekking to Base Camp.
You’re climbing a very steep hill, you’ve got your eyes fixed on the top, it looks a very long way off, you try to find the best way up, you wonder if you’re going to make it…. Finally, out of breath and ready to drop, you get to the top.
Oh look, it’s not the top after all. There’s a whole other hill to climb…..
We thought the Planting Combinations File was the killer. But our latest project, the Concept Garden Project is showing some teeth. It was set on our first day back after Easter. We’ve been given two weeks to complete it, with the presentation of our plans on the day after the Bank Holiday weekend.
Piece of cake, I thought. (I’d already got my idea, been thinking about it for ages.) My theme is hypoxia, the reason for the Xtreme Everest 2 trek to Base Camp. I knew what I wanted the garden to look like, did a rough sketch in a matter of hours. All I had to do was complete the plan, render it, write a plant list, do a quick measured perspective drawing (which we had learnt how to do with Claire last term), and write the brief. I started straight away and reckoned it should be done in a couple of days. And it was really important that it was done in a couple of days…..
Because I was going to Majorca. In fact I’m there right now….
The view from where I’m sitting….
Graham and I had planned this trip months ago. A few days together at our house in Majorca was just what we would need after his treatment at the London Clinic and my trek in the Himalayas. And it was early in the summer term so hopefully I would be deadline free and just starting out on any projects. So I could take some reading with me. Maybe do a bit of sketching…..
Huh!
My big mistake was coming up with a garden design based on a spiral. Do you have any idea how ******** difficult it is to draw an accurate design based on a spiral? Well I didn’t when I started out. But I do now….
And a perspective drawing when there are no straight lines and the curves go vertically as well as horizontally……
Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!
So yesterday saw me at Gatwick Airport with my satchel as hand baggage, completely weighed down with drafting equipment (I’d have packed my drawing board if I could have fitted it in.) And it’s another watch this space moment…..
Will she make it to the top of the hill? Will there be another hill waiting for her when and if she gets there?
On Monday at Hampton Court we threw the windows open and bathed in the warm air that flowed into the studio. (To be fair we didn’t actually throw the windows open. They are so ancient that if we were to throw them open there would be a very real danger that they would drop off and plunge to the ground, killing a few visitors on their way. So we had to ask Humaira to open them for us, which she did rather gingerly! But you get the general drift…..)
My favourite yew trees.
It’s hard to feel down when the sun is transforming the world, bare branches are bursting into colour in waves of glorious green, and the magnolia blossom I pass on the way to college is worth stopping the car for.
In my garden, (which is always a little late thanks to heavy clay soil and a north facing aspect,) it’s been my tubs which have been the show stoppers.
I’m back. We’re back. The madness that was the Easter holidays is over. Term started on Monday and we’ve got our heads down and we’re embarking on the next big thing. Which is….
But hang on a minute. Haven’t I forgotten something? ‘What about the planting combinations file?’ I hear you cry. The will-she-won’t-she cliff hanger I finished with at the end of last term. Did I get it done in time? Did I hand in the folder with the ten planting plans, (six set by KLC, four chosen by us,) the ten elevations showing a cross section of each plan with the individual plants sketched in by hand,and the ten tables with each individual plant listed with a description, characteristics and special considerations.
YES I DID. And let me tell you something….. It practically killed me.
I got back from Nepal on the Sunday night. I took a day to recover from jet lag, exhaustion and Nepalese tummy (which is showing annoying signs of wanting to stick around). Then I shut myself away in my little shed in the garden. And didn’t come out again for six days. Except for food, sleep and the odd nervous breakdown.
I had handed in six plans and elevations at the end of last term for Annie Guilfoyle to cast her eagle eye over. After receiving her comments the six plans all needed redrawing! So in six days I drew up four new and six revised plans, inked them all in, labelled them, sketched four elevations, and did eleven plant tables. Not ten. Eleven. Because somehow I managed not to save the table for the Moist Soil by a Lake or Stream, Soil neutral PH – AND I HAD TO DO IT AGAIN. I copied them all, printed them all out, spent hours trying to slide each individual sheet of paper into those infuriating plastic holder things that crumple up and crease and generally make life even more difficult than it is already…..
But I did it. There I was on Monday morning, with everyone else on the course, handing my precious folder into Humaira at ten o’clock (any later and we get penalised by losing marks). It’s not perfect. I was working flat out and with no time to spare so mistakes were made. So I’m not going to get a great mark for it. But the great Planting Combinations Project – which seemed so innocent and unassuming when we first heard about it – is done.
And now it’s on to the next thing. On Monday we were given our next project – coming up with a design for a concept garden for the Hampton Court Flower Show. We’ve got two weeks for this one….. And on Tuesday we were set our Construction File project – which I’m very much hoping isn’t going to be in the same league as the Planting Combinations File…. But you never know.
This workload for this course is insane. Great things are expected of us. Great things are demanded of us. And you know what…. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
All the most exciting stories like to end a chapter with a cliffhanger. And I’m no different.
We finished the first term at KLC on Tuesday with a one to one presentation of our planting plans for the Balham project to our client. We also had an assessment from Annie of the first stage of our Planting Combinations Project – which has to be completed over the holidays. And we had watercolour tuition and practice with Claire. So it was a big day.
The Planting Combinations project was set at the start of the term. It consists of ten different situations ranging from dry shade under trees, to an exposed site with heavy clay soil and extremes of temperature. For each of these we have to come up with a planting plan, draw an elevation (a drawing of how the planting would look if viewed at eye level) and a list of all the plants selected with descriptions, characteristics and specific requirements. We had to hand in the first four last Monday, with the other six to be completed over the holidays, and the whole project has to be handed in on the first day of term. Otherwise we don’t pass the diploma…….
Aaaaaaaaaarggghhhhhhh!
Because I’m going to be away for three weeks I’m panicking. Because these little blighters take a lot longer than you think they are going to. I thought I was ok. I had prepared the lists of plants for each situation over the course of the term, so that when we finished the Balham planting plan last week I could get going on the combinations. So I started working on them last Wednesday and worked pretty much full out until Sunday evening. By which time I had finished six plans, six elevations and two plant lists.
And not done anything else! While my sister Mary has been getting ready for our trek, trying on all the kit and writing some really funny posts about it (which you can read at twinseverest.wordpress.com) I haven’t even taken mine out of the carrier bags yet!
Yesterday I got my legs waxed, tidied the house and did my CAD homework (that’s computer aided drawing to the unititiated – which was me before this course started). In the evening I sat down to do one of the plant lists. And spent the whole time trying to find one of the lists I’d done at the weekend which in my brain dead state I must have failed to save. Because I looked and looked but it’s gone. So not only am I one list down. But I didn’t get to do the one I was going to do last night.
So the pressure is on.
Today I’m getting my hair cut and doing as many plant lists as I can. Tomorrow I’m concentrating on getting ready to go away: shopping for the last minute stuff, unpacking all the kit and making sure nothing’s missing, and seeing if it will all go into the not very big rucksacks we’ve hired.
We leave on Saturday. Return on Sunday April 14th. Then I’ve got a week before term begins to do four more planting plans, elevations and plant lists. It’s going to be tight.
The Balham project is nearly done. And today we presented our planting plans.
So another lunatic, going through my presentation, talking to myself drive to Hampton Court this morning. And eighteen of us with five minutes each to show what we’re made of when I got there. No client today. She’s coming in next week. Instead we were presenting to Terry, the man in charge of the Hampton Court gardens.
So that’s not scary then….
Actually it wasn’t as scary as last time. For several reasons. One – we’ve done it before so it wasn’t quite so new and frightening. Two – Terry was much kinder to us than he could have been. And Three – I was fifth to present this time rather than sixteenth. So I got my bit out of the way quite early on and could sit back, relax and enjoy everyone else’s presentations. Which I did. Because they were really good……
The planting plan stage of this Project has been really challenging. It was a difficult site to choose plants for – dry shade on all sides and an awkward shape. And I kept changing my mind about the plants I wanted to use…. But in the end I had to make decisions and commit myself to paper. And I was really proud of myself. Because look…..
My first planting plan.
And I did some sketches to go with it. To show what some of the planting combinations would look like.
Me…. Sketching…. And actually showing people my sketches. As part of a presentation.
Two months ago I would never have believed it was possible.
Which just goes to show what good teaching and not being hung up about getting it wrong can do for you. Because you don’t know what you can do until you give it a go.
(Maybe now it’s time to concentrate on improving the photography skills…)
Yesterday was a very big day for the students of KLC.
Seven weeks into the course and all eighteen of us presented real plans of the real garden we had surveyed two weeks ago to our real client.
Picture the scene…..
It’s a beautiful morning, clear blue sky, roads free of traffic (it’s half term) and as I’m driving to school I’m talking to myself. The first sign of madness? Possibly. But actually what I’m doing is practising my presentation. Over and over…..
Because I’m scared.
Our client ( wife, husband and son) is arriving at the Studio at ten and we have been given a strict five minute each to take it in turns to stand up and present our plans. All eighteen of us – to an audience of the client; each other; our Director of Studies, Annie Guilfoyle; and the Principal of KLC, Jenny Gibbs.
Now I’ve done a fair bit of presenting in my time, (although I haven’t stood up in front of an audience for fifteen years) but I’m still feeling really nervous. Because this is a whole new ballgame. I’ve only just started in the business of garden design. And I’m presenting a little bit of a very new me to complete strangers.
I’m on at number sixteen so I see most of the others present before it’s my turn. It’s a long morning, and I’m counting down the people who go before me and feeling more and more anxious. But everyone does really well. We are all nervous. But there are some great ideas. And it’s fascinating to see how eighteen people come up with different design solutions for the same garden.
It’s a relief to get it over and done with. And without falling over or forgetting what I was supposed to say. But the thing that I’m really thrilled about is how much I’ve learned in such a short space of time. I’ve taken a brief, surveyed a site, and drawn up a plan that could actually work.
My First Master Plan
This is the plan I presented. Seven weeks ago I would not have believed it was possible that I could produce something like this.
Another skill I’ve picked up recently is graffiti writing. It was for a project for the KLC course where we were asked to come up with a concept for The Chelsea Fringe. This is a garden festival which takes place in London in late May and early June.
My idea was inspired by the John Lennon Wall in Prague, a wall in a secluded square opposite the French embassy, where, after Lennon’s death in 1980, his image appeared along with Beatles lyrics and political messages. Despite repeated coats of whitewash, the secret police never managed to keep it clean for long.
After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 the messages became less political. But visiting tourists began to make their own contributions.
On a visit to Prague in 2011 we went to the wall and I noticed a quote which really leapt out at me.
For those who can’t make out the words it says:
‘So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul. Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.’
When I got home I looked it up and found out that it came from a poem called Comes the Dawn.
I thought of this quotation and the impact it had made on me when we were asked to come up with ideas for The Chelsea Fringe. So my suggestion was for an installation to be utilised in areas across London where green space is limited. The installation would comprise of a vertical patchwork of living plants and flowers – a living wall interspersed with garden related quotations, blank spaces for people to add their own garden inspired thoughts, and receptacles for seed packets so that those inspired to do so could go away and begin to ‘decorate their own souls’.
And for my concept board I learnt how to do graffiti writing.
On Monday eighteen embryo garden designers were to be found in a garden in Balham. A real garden, belonging to a real house, belonging to a real client. We were there to conduct our first survey. Three teams of three in the morning, crossing over with three teams of three in the afternoon. It was intense.
Each team was allocated a boundary, and our task was to accurately measure everything on that boundary and put it onto a plan. And then the three separate boundaries had to fit together. It was like three different jigsaw pieces, made by three different makers, that all had to join up to create a unified whole.
The next day, back in the studio at Hampton Court, we had to collate all the elements from the previous day, and print 18 copies of an accurate plan for all of us to use as the basis for the individual designs that we are about to embark upon. It was a little bit mad, and a little bit chaotic, as we tried to pull everything together. And all I can say is thank goodness for Annie Guilfoyle, Matthew Childs and Catherine Heatherington.
Annie and Catherine are our tutors, with Matt assisting: border collies to our herd of student sheep. They – like all the tutors at KLC – are practicing garden designers, and boy do they know their stuff. Their commitment to our development is unfailing; their determination to get the best out of us is admirable; their cheerfulness, patience and good humour seem inexhaustible.
I’m sure there are many design schools out there with good tutors. But they can’t be as good as the tutors at KLC….
It’s half way through double maths. Stuffy classroom, logarithms and algebra, boring teacher droning on –
It feels like hours – no, make that days – maybe even weeks – have been ticking by while you count down the seconds until the end of the lesson. You gaze out of the window. The view outside is as uninspiring as the view inside. Tarmac paths, red brick, classrooms….
Well, it’s a bit different at KLC.
For one thing we never have time to be bored. But if we ever did have a moment to look out of the window…
Old Dog. New Tricks 