Whether you’re thinking about designing your own little patch of garden or designing one for a client, the inspiration has to be the the starting point of the whole process.
For their Chelsea Flower Show garden Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliam have a lot of inspiring material from the beautiful Cloudy Bay area of New Zealand, their partners are The Cloudy Bay vineyard.
The idea behind the garden is that it’s part of a larger garden, a relaxing space to be enjoyed, portraying a life-style that reflects quality, simplicity and elegance. Having these ideas firmly in place at the initial stage is the foundation for any design, the frame-work that holds it all together.
Gavin and Andrew are also motivated by making a garden that’s going to be really interesting for the public to see and be inspired by. That may be by introducing unusual plants or new ideas about how to use materials.
It always helps to bounce ideas around with someone else and amazing things can be achieved when two creative people combine their talents. The phrase ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ came to mind when I talked to them, it also sums up the team effort of all the experts that are involved in the making of this garden.
As well as the people at Cloudy Bay, the list of partners also comprises:
- the contractors who’ll be building the garden,
- companies supply all the different materials,
- lighting designers,
- and the nurseries supplying the plants,
- including Hortus Loci who will look after them until they’re ready to be planted at the Show.
Knowing just how much work is involved in a show garden, and all the decisions that have to be made about the detail, will really add to the experience when you see the completed garden.
This week Andrew and Gavin have been making decisions about the precise finish of some of the hard-landscape materials and visited a stone merchant to choose boulders for the garden. These will create sculptural elements across the garden and have been selected to match, as closely as possible, those in the Wairu valley, the location of the Cloudy Bay vineyard.
There’ll be another update next week, when there’ll be just six weeks to go.
Click here to see last weeks post about the garden.
Jill
images: sketch by WilsonMcWilliam Studio
photo by Gavin McWilliam.
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