Flowers From My Local Nursery

Malvern Show has lots of nurseries within its three counties catchment which prove they're up with the best who exhibit at Chelsea and suchlike. However, I'm always pleased to see my local specialist nursery when it's time to display his foxgloves based on the national collection he holds here in Wiltshire.

Wordless Wednesday: Saturday's Alarm Clock

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Postcard From Malvern

Atomic physics meets the Wicker Man: just one of the many contrasts to be seen at this year's Malvern Spring Gardening Show.

It's a fantastic show this year and I've had excellent company over the past few days to take it all in. I have a more extensive post over at Friday's The Guardian Gardening Blog which was sent in direct from the showground :)

I'm collecting together everyone else's posts [there's some absolute corkers - Ed] and will update this post with a round up for you via Mr Linky very soon. Update 17/5: Mr Linky is here! Do add your post about Malvern if I haven't already :)

Update 26/8: The picture heading this post is now playing on the Wicker Man website as part of their 2011 Sculpture slideshow :)

Note: Ann Somerset Miles deserves a gold medal for not only blogging on 4 different blogs, but also blogging on each one for 4 days from the show!

Where Shall We Meet?

There's around 25-30 of us going to the show this year, mainly on the Thursday and Friday. As I warned at the beginning of the year, Helen and I simply haven't had to do much in the way of organising things like we did last year. A more informal meeting worked in September, so here's hoping it works again in a few days time.

Besides, the show is HUGE, so you'll need oodles of time to get around it all and make the most of the day.

We don't have our own meeting place this year, so there's no central place where you can be assured another friendly face will turn up and see you there. Last September the Design Theatre turned into the natural meeting place and looking at the weather forecast for later this week, it seems the Garden in Harmony Theatre will perform the same function this time.

I'm there on the Thursday and Saturday and I'll make sure I'm around at 3.30pm just inside the tent door on the right as you face the stage if you'd like to come and say hello. If it's hot and sunny, I'll be in the same spot, but outside!

I've contacted TCAS to see if there's somewhere we can leave messages - I'll let you know if I find out anything. Otherwise, do DM me on @Malvernmeet or email me at Malvernmeet at gmail dot com if you'd like to arrange something more definite. Please keep this to the pm - I hardly saw anything of the show last year and I'd like to this time!

From Paper to the Eve of the Build: Keni Lee's Second Installment

Here's the second installment of Keni Lee's guest post on his design submission for the Chris Beardshaw Mentorship Scholarship (CBMS)...

About the garden

The 'Atom' theme was chosen by the CBMS team in conjunction with this year's UNESCO year of Chemistry. My design was inspired partly by the metaphysical understanding of atoms by the 5th century BC Chinese philosopher, Laozi; and partly by the convergence of Newtonian- and quantum-mechanical understanding of atoms. The latter is guided mainly by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which basically states that matter can exist both as a particle and a wave. This is reflected in the garden by contrasting features of rock vs water and circle vs angles. This bridges well with the central principles of daodejing, the defining work by Laozi. Many in the world would recognise his work via the infamous “ying-yang” concept. However, the daodejing is more profound than this. In one of its passages (Chapter 42), it stated "Dao begets one; one begets two; two begets three; three begets all things". In modern interpretation, this "trinity of pure things" can be recognised as "proton, electron and neutron", the building blocks of life on Earth. It is interesting to note that the trinity concept is also prevalent in the Christian faith.

As one can see, the unifying concept across both the scientific and metaphysical view of atoms can be brought together by this "trinity of pure things". This unifying concept is reflected by the presence of all features of my garden in sets of three.

Building the garden and my personal take of things so far

From the moment I first sketched my first draft design up to very recently, I had no idea that building a garden would cost so much and that it would involve so many factors such as plants availability and resource availability. I think I have learnt more about project management than garden design in these past few months leading to the build. The odd thing is, I enjoyed every single second of it. The pressure is omnipresent and sometimes you just want to give up. But I have decided to dedicate this garden to my late father, so throwing down the towel is not an option for me. In many ways, the garden reflects my relationship with my father. My father has always been very proud of his Chinese roots, whilst appreciative of my Western perspective of things in life. Seeing the world from these two very perspectives can be both frustrating and enriching at the same time, a sentiment that I wish to portray in my design.

Schedule-wise, the construction will begin on the 18th of April. Due to difficulties in securing leave from my work, I have had to schedule the build in a staggered manner. For the 1st week, my partner will begin the building of the hard landscaping features. Hopefully, all major work would be done by then. During the 2nd week, I have to unfortunately fly to Shanghai for business, and my partner will be flown to Berlin for work too. So build will only continue on the 3rd week, unless I can find volunteers to help with the build. I am trying to get help from friends, but it's difficult when your friends are scattered in the four corners of the globe, and families are thousands of miles away. I will be onsite full time from the 29th April.

Final words

I hope this account shed some light into my thoughts and what the garden mean to me. Designing is such a personal experience that it is sometimes challenging to convey emotion or ideas in words. I hope that the finish garden will be a success and that visitors to my garden will appreciate the finer details weaved into the garden. Please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts or feedback or advice, I will be delighted to hear from you.

Thanks Keni for giving us such a personal and great insight into the challenges faced when designing and building a show garden. I'm sure the project management and problem solving experience you've gained are just as important as the show garden itself.

Today is the start of the second week of the build at Malvern folks and it's been hot and thirsty work so far. Do keep an eye on Keni's progress via his blog.

NB Design images are courtesy of TCAS and NOT available under a Creative Commons licence.

From Laozi to Heisenberg – The Making Of

The show garden build begins today and Keni Lee has kindly agreed to guest blog for Meet @ Malvern to give us an insight of what it's like. Today he tells us a little about himself and takes us up to the point of the acceptance of his design...

Preamble

For this year’s Malvern Spring Gardening Show, I will be building a show garden under the auspice of the Chris Beardshaw Mentoring Scholarship (CBMS) programme. This short article tells the story of how and why I got involved, as well as describing the underlying principles of my garden.

About me and why on earth am I building a show garden at Malvern

I am originally from Malaysia but grew up in various countries around the globe, including France and Japan. I have a PhD in Chemistry from France and currently work in healthcare PR in London. I speak fluent French, Mandarin, Cantonese and Malay; and English I suppose. Other than being a very serious amateur gardener for the past few years, I have no formal training in horticulture or garden design. Having said that, I am pretty good in botany (as part of my undergraduate studies) and bonsai cultivation.

Since moving to England, I have been inspired by the British healthy obsession with all things nature and gardening. An obsession that is unique amongst other European countries that I am familiar with. Having lived in one of West Sussex great gardens (Nymans), I was motivated to get into garden design/horticulture. By pure chance, I stumbled upon a website with a link to the CBMS less than a week before its deadline. My initial thought was that if I win the competition, this would be a very good indication that I may have a little bit of talent in this profession.

So I sketched a few drawings and sent them through. I was delighted when I was informed that my design has been shortlisted and I would proceed to the next few stages of the competition. However, within days, I received news that my father died, and I had to fly back to Malaysia for the funeral during the crucial few weeks when the subsequent rounds of the scholarship selection process took place. The organising committee was very kind with me and allowed me to extend a few of their deadlines. Eventually, and to my great surprise, I got in and my design was selected as one of the finalists.

Thanks Keni - the next installment takes us up to the eve of the start of the build. If you can't wait to know more, Keni also has his own blog all about this show garden...

Wordless Wednesday: Pussy Willow