The kale is now over but the roses bloom

The title sounds like it ought to be a proverb or a password or something! But it is actually just what was happening today.

Today was another fine day so I was very busy in the garden and polytunnel. I picked the last of the polytunnel Kale

I am now planting out various overwintering perennials into the garden - see these rose bushes on the front right?

While overwintering inside the polytunnel they had produced the most beautiful blooms all winter, I cut these and have had them inside the house since 20 th April - they are still wonderful.

The rose bushes have now been pruned and will stand on the patio when the weather warms up a little more.

I planted out some of the tree peonies I grew from seed, or from tubers moved when we were doing the patio, there are loads more plants waiting to go into this now cleared bed.

And I made a start on clearing out the dead stuff from the "Hampton Court" flower bed I made last summer

The garden looks particularly pretty at this time of year :)

I also thought I would share with you the breakfast routine here at Compost Mansions. We come downstairs and make breakfast and then the ravening hordes gather,

awaiting tit bits of marmite toast :)

Hampton Court Flower Show part 3

 RHS Hampton Court part 1

 RHS Hampton Court images

 If you want to know what plants were used in The Ecover Garden, here is a full list. After we visited the Ecover Garden we moved on to look at the Ecover Bee and some of the Ecover planters

This is "The Bee" an amazing sculpture made from recycled materials and Ecover plastic bottles. It was really quite spectacular!

 

 

 Ecover sponsored 16 planters which have been designed by eight gardening celebrities.

 This is Adam Frost's "Bee friendly planter" which was smothered in bees and other insects, so it obviously worked!

Lots of watering was going on, even at one o'clock - I think a lot of plants would have just died in the heat without a lot of " topping up" of watering during the day. 

Maria and I spent four hours at RHS Hampton Court and it was very hot indeed on Monday ( and has continued so all this week)  and I must admit after a couple of hours looking around and walking around we got to the point where we were hiding in every available patch of shade and drinking lots of water.

We took some food with us but also purchased a sandwich - and this was a pleasant surprise because the food outlets were "RHS" branded and all were the same price and not very expensive, for what they were. I bought a rather nice tomato and herb bread roll with salad and lemon mayo roll for me and a roasted veg and mozzarella version for Maria. We sat by the very large water feature, in the shade of a rather fine tree and ate our packed lunch. Fortunately we had both brought lots of water with us - and we needed it as it got hotter and hotter during the afternoon.

We carried on looking around and discussing what we thought the judges would make of the gardens, and after lunch we began to see award signs popping up on the gardens. Maria and I were spot on with our awards for virtually every garden <smug grin>

 

Best Summer Garden was A Cool Garden, I tried to get a decent photo but the camera boom was always in the way!

This is A Room with a View which won Gold - here is Monty Don getting ready to film a piece to camera for one of the THREE (!) Gardeners World specials which were on BBC TV this week.

 This is Spirits of the Land, designed by Mariko Naka, which I thought was simply beautiful. It won Silver ( I thought it should have been Gold, personally)

 

Apart from The Ecover Garden, my favourite was Athanasia, designed by Weald Design, which won Gold in the Show Garden category. This was billed as " ... a place for reflection, rest and a celebration of the beauty of nature. It is a serene garden that offers a moment of tranquillity, as well as hope for the future."
 

 I loved the wooden block seating and the planting was ( yet again) in the "cottage style" which I love. The fact there were lots of geraniums on display probably helps my view.

"Ashes to Ashes" a bit strange looking but the dark coloured planting looked spectacular in the sunshine - this also won Gold.

 We also looked at the Flyte of Fancy chicken house decoration competition

I liked this one best decorated by Philippa Forrester

I also really loved this beautiful Buff Orpington cockerel



By about 3.30 Maria and I had had enough - we were just too hot and tired and sun baked to stay any longer and also aware that we still had a more than four hour journey home. So we headed for the exit, pausing only to take a closer look at the very first garden we saw on our way into the Show.

Desolation to Regeneration  the very first garden we saw when we arrived, also won Gold and Best Conceptual Garden.

I really liked this, the nearest end of this garden had accompanying sounds of a forest fire and the most amazing planting of "hot" coloured plants,  then as you walk through the garden you come across charred sculptures and a lot of very new, green planting conveying what one might see after a forest fire. It was stunning.


So, we trekked across the burning desert for hours and hours walked back on the wide path in the blazing sunshine past Hampton Court Palace to the railway station and caught the train to Waterloo, then the Tube to Paddington and managed to catch the 1722 train home. I got back in to Compost Mansions at 8.30 and had a cool shower!

A fabulous day, thank you so much to Ecover UK for the tickets and thanks to all the fabulous designers and gardeners who made it all happen.

I have not discussed all that we saw yet, and there was so much more we did not see but I hope you have got a flavour of the event.  If you want to see the complete list of all the gardens you can find them on the RHS website here

RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 1 - a hot day and a Gold medal winning garden

Yesterday at an unearthly hour of the morning I set off to Hampton Court, squinting in the unaccustomed sunshine. 

Our train journey took a shade over 4 hours with various changes but all went smoothly

and by 11am we were walking over the bridge from the Hampton Court railway station

pausing on the bridge to admire  to admire the Royal Palace in the distance as we walked along the River Thames

 

and to admire it some more as we walked past it. 

We arrived at the Show at about 11.30 am. When we got inside the RHS show ground we entered the Inspire zone and were immediately greeted by merry Ecover elves handing out free samples and showing off their electric car. Then we were straight (literally) into the first of the Conceptual Gardens.

I will write about the gardens in more detail in another post but let us just say this first garden set a very high standard for the others to follow!

I went on Press Day, so of course a lot of designers were being interviewed, standing by their creations.

 

and there were lots of TV crews and photographers wandering around filming and taking photos.

I had an appointment at noon at The Ecover Garden so we went straight there and were so impressed by what we saw. The planting scheme was so vibrant and had a cottage garden, insect attracting feel to it whilst also managing to be very fresh and modern looking.

 

Movement and colour of water is represented by the planting scheme.

 My appointment was for a one-to-one chat with the designer of The Ecover Garden, Matthew Childs. I was so excited to be talking to him, especially as he recognised my name from our Tweet exchanges

Discussing the inspiration for the garden

Ecover bottle handle two way bench, highlighting the recycled and plant based plastics used by Ecover for their products.

Blue plastic strips are made from recycled plastic and linking in the Ecover logo to the garden

According to Matthew, the planting mainly echoed the colours of the Ecover brand, blue, vibrant lime green and white, which also were the blues, greens and whites of moving water. This was the theme of the garden "Water is Life".

However there were also "coastal cliffs" of earthy coloured lime plaster walls and blue recycled plastic sculptures.

Matthew is using sustainable materials such as recycled plastic, lime render and mulched beds to reduce water loss. Also the garden is packed with an abundance of flowers that are particularly bee friendly - as we all know how important they are for us to thrive.

There was a  a beautiful moving water feature with streams of water cascading down  from the Toilet Cleaner fountain into a series of pools. In the background is the Bottle Top lamp (yes it lights up at night, apparently)

The garden appeared astonishingly well established, especially the lichen covered trees which  looked as if they had been there forever with the garden designed around them. ( the site was actually totally flat before the build up started)

Matthew said that he  wanted people to be talking and thinking about the use of recycled plastic in the garden. He also wanted them to be inspired to think about sustainable materials and appreciate the brands and manufacturers who use them.

My enjoyable discussion finally came to an end, as The Countess of Wessex wanted to talk to Matthew about his wonderful garden.

so I said thank you and goodbye.

Not surprisingly the RHS judges awarded Gold and Best in Show to The Ecover Garden

Well deserved in my opinion, I honestly thought it was the best garden I saw at the Show.


More about the Show tomorrow!

Today, hopefully I will be

 

Looking at a lot of these

And visiting somewhere with quite a lot of these (but not with my name on :-) )

Think of me today while I visit RHS Hampton Court Flower show  :)

Message on my bottle

The first parcel which arrived yesterday was a very special bottle of washing up liquid from Ecover UK :-) Can you see why it is special?

Thank you Lauren from Ecover HQ, I have used a bit already and it smells lovely :-)


As you may remember, I am off to Hampton Court Flower Show sometime this week, thanks to some tickets given to me by Ecover UK. I can't wait to see The Ecover Garden and meet designer Matthew Childs :-) I have spent a very hot couple of hours online today making sure I have all the trains worked out; yesterday we went over to Malvern and I gave my friend Maria her tickets just in case we get separated - I don't want for her to not be able to get on the train!

I am a bit concerned about the heat we are expecting this week  - travelling for 4 hours each way on trains and underground in this heat is not something I am looking forward to, but it is such an adventure to be going somewhere so exciting that I am sure I will manage :-)

And the winner is...

Ok,  the Hampton Court tickets/Ecover giveaway is now officially closed. Many thanks to Ecover UK for offering the tickets and a Gardeners Pack as prizes.

This morning I wrote down on a slip of paper each name from the list of those who entered, folded it and put each one inside a (clean!) compost caddy.

  I then shut my eyes and, with Compostman there as a witness :-) drew out the first slip of paper

 Then the next and finally the runner up.

So ( cue drum roll...) the winner of the first pair of tickets to RHS Hampton Court Flower Show is...














 The winner of the second pair of tickets to RHS Hampton Court Flower Show is...

 


and the runner up, who will get a goody pack of Ecover products is...

Congratulations! And commiserations to those of you who did not win.

If PixieMum, Sarah and Julie you could all email me (compostwoman@the-compostbin.com) with your real life names I can then forward your email on to Ecover UK HQ and they will sort out the tickets or the parcel of goodies.

And when you go, make sure you visit The Ecover Garden and look around the Inspire Zone :-)


Thank you all so much for joining in and sorry to those who were not successful this time. But keep your eyes on The Compost Bin as I may well have more goodies to give away in the future :-)