Haven - Our 2007 Tatton garden - Scoops Silver Gilt

For the second year CWT had a back-to-back garden at the RHS Tatton Flower Show. ‘Haven’ was an ornamental, contemporary wildlife garden designed by Jo Capstick and Nicky Saddington, who also designed last year’s Silver Medal-winning entry ‘Naturally Victorian’. In an urban setting, Haven’s purpose was to provide a place to relax, enjoy the beautiful planting and appreciate the wildlife in the garden.

This year the building of the garden was hampered by the inclement weather: pouring rain one day, glorious sunshine the next. For an RHS show garden the plants have to be in immaculate condition – every damaged leaf has to be removed and every spot of compost on the leaves brushed away. Imagine keeping the garden clean in the terrible muddy and wet conditions!

As judging day arrived, disaster struck! Somehow a hose had been left running overnight and our garden was flooded. The sunken seating area was a foot deep in muddy water with the log pile floating on the top. The garden was baled out, log piles rebuilt, gravel dug out, washed and replaced, and all the wood and paving cleaned. This was in addition to the last minute primping and preening necessary to prepare a show garden for the RHS judges.

Luckily the organisers were sympathetic and agreed that our garden could be judged last, giving us more time to resolve the problem. Reaseheath College also sent some students to help out – one wonderful thing about Tatton is how everyone is willing to help each other out in times of crisis. A couple of short but heavy downpours made the work even more difficult, but by 1.30pm the garden was as good as we could make it – just before the judges turned up and awarded us a Silver-Gilt medal!

It was a fantastic result and made all the hard work worthwhile. The garden looked beautiful and thanks must go to Jo and Nicky the designers and all the staff and volunteers who worked so hard to build the garden and also to everyone behind the scenes (you know who you are!).

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we are developing at Bickley Hall Farm?
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