Jungle Drums

Our little Wrens, who built a nest above the till, successfully reared their brood of three chicks. I checked the nest on Monday morning and was really upset to find it empty – I’d seen squirrels nearby the day before and thought they’d carried out a raid. After last week’s events it made me feel thoroughly miserable. Fortunately, later that afternoon there was a shower and Sapphy, the young daughter of a customer, was about to help herself to a pink umbrella from the stand when she found one of the chicks trapped in its folds. The chick was released and managed to fly away, fully fledged, hopefully to catch up with its siblings. Now there’s a heart warmer.

Following on from the success of our Vertical Garden we decided to create something similar for our display at the Royal Norfolk Show. We envisaged the tiny Garden Room of a plant-mad person. I had it in my head it was a man and didn’t realize untill right at the end, when Jamie placed a pair of women’s gardening gloves in a trug, as a prop, that all the time he was presuming it to be a lady’s garden. Anyway – I called it ‘Need more plants!’ 
So we made a vertical garden for a 3mx2m heated conservatory. Being a heated room, we had an exciting range of plants to choose from, things that would never survive outdoors in the UK such as tender Aspleniums, bromeliads, Anthuriums, Spathyphyllum, Alocasias etc. Jamie created some wonderfully exuberant pot displays and we even managed to cram in a little garden table and chairs. It was incredibly hard work but such fun. We arranged, rearranged, tweaked and titivated; cleaned, fussed and polished late into the night, until we felt we couldn’t do any more to impress the judges and we got our reward with a Gold Medal. 
Well done to Jamie, who although convinced we hadn’t allowed ourselves enough time to pull it all together, and harped on about how proper nurseries plan their display a year in advance and not a few days before blah blah…., made a stupendous effort and worked like a Trojan to get the show garden completed in time, whilst coming up with some amazingly creative ideas. 
After the show we’ll dismantle the wall and install it at the nursery. More on this later, but we’ve had such late nights and early mornings this week and are fit to drop, so we’ll just put some pictures on for now.

I won’t be able to blog for a couple of weeks but Jamie’s been threatening to blog for some time now about the construction of The Vertical Garden and also his trip to New Zealand – he has a photograph of what must be the world’s biggest Cordyline! Pull your finger out Jamie.

A few quick shots from the nursery

Pot displays around the pay hut

Spiky, grassy things

Sensational foliage colour

Inside the main greenhouse

Early morning. More coloured foliage