“We know there are only a few months to go when the Chelsea nightmares start to kick in. I’ve had my first: the protagonist knows who he is as I called him in the cold light of day to tell him off about his appearance in my dream, in which he, at the 2012 show, decides to change his design at the last minute, incorporating, instead of the proposed structure, a life-size galleon made of Playmobil. The garden was accessorised by matching pine wardrobes and  chests of drawers.

I have absolutely no idea where this would come from, but if a ship appears on Main Avenue in May, you heard it here first.”

I’ve forgiven Mr. Sturgeon. He knows I wasn’t bothered as much about the pine as I was about the height at which he piled it. He has been a gentleman in suffering  without complaint from that ‘completely innocent victim of a bad dream’ situation.

In reality, matters are productive. The prototype of the seats was thrown out in what can only described as a Prima Donna moment: “It is NOT Father Christmas’s grotto and if I want a sleigh I’ll ask for it”. Neither becoming nor productive. I’m a bit embarrassed.

The trees, however, are fabulous even in their nakedness.

A little peek:

Shiny, slightly peachy stems and a very nice blue sky which would be very handy on the Judgement Day, please.

And this way round would be good. Last night I dreamed that they were growing upside down, and woke up with an image of a dozen judges standing round the trees, assessing their rootballs 6m in the air.

My second best bit of this week has to be visiting http://www.herberthall.com to ensure that the wine they are kindly supplying to sit in the cooler, is just right.

So here goes.

This garden was always intended to be a ‘REAL’ garden. I’ve written before about my lack of fulfilment in designing conceptual spaces, and I desperately wanted this garden to be a place that people could identify with; a space that you might find at the bottom of your own garden.

A 1950s caravan that I spotted whilst on the Isle of Wight might seem an unusual addition, but I’ve hankered after an Airstream as a studio for long, long time – this is an impossibility at the moment, but Chelsea is a rather fab place to test the theory.

Pink  and cream roses are going to be used liberally to soften a fairly geometric and simple layout that holds a few places to sit (no change there then). Curving, in a sense ergonomic,  timber benches ( I was going to say undulating but I  know exactly who would seize upon that word with gleeful mockery) are around and about (if of course we can work out how to make them, as one of them hovers beautifully unrealistically above a stretch of water which is going to earn its keep by doubling up as a wine cooler – who on earth designed this garden?).

And there are dog kennels and hammocks – I think there may be a theme of ’sitting’ going on here……

Straight out of a Botticelli

Sometimes you just don’t need flowers.

And sometimes you do: the rose list for The Caravan Club’s RHS Chelsea  garden has been finalised with Roger Platts at his nursery in Kent, and there are some treats in store. Delicious pastels are on their way: I’m taking the opportunity to indulge my inner Chintz Lover, and I’m proud of it.

It all seems a far cry from the recent spell in Florida, spell being the operative word. Finding myself in the giftshop (Olivander’s naturally),  next to a lifesize replica of Hogwarts,

It's as real as it looks

I managed to acquire a wand. Yes really. I’m just learning how to use it. I’m contemplating it to Chelsea with me and use it on an unsuspecting judge. I’m currently   pointing it at the screen in the studio and it’s working wonders.Next I’m going to wave it over a fab Burwash project just to see what happens.

The RHS Chelsea 2012 garden is starting to come together (ie I think I now understand how the ‘impossible’ benches may work). Roses have been chosen, trees tagged and shrubs selected. Doris has had a new go-faster stripe, in a fetching shade of baby blue, and the dog kennel is being drawn up as I write (so not by me, clearly).

Gardens in East Sussex and Kent have won prizes and featured in  mags this month, which we are all thrilled about.

Here, peppermint creams are being made and bagged, parties are fabulously catered for and I remember why I adore Christmas.

What hurricane

you may be forgiven  for thinking that the job of a garden designer is a breeze (more of this below). Standing around waving hands commanding “Another dune here, please”.

We’re very pleased and relieved that this garden has been built. I remember singing a song at school about foolish men building on the sand, so when this project came my way, the words ‘footings’  and  ‘piles’ (you know exactly the sort I mean) were kind of uppermost in my mind. I didn’t want this garden to go anywhere, and actually  what was here had spent  a few million years being shifted around and moved about daily.

This is the reality

Windy. Cold. Not happy

Hurricane Katya had decided to have a last dance on our shores, and  it wasn’t a waltz. I discovered interesting things about coastal planting, one of which is that saltspray actually works the same way as  hair gel

I also learned a lot by googling groynes  when researching the sea defence we were building. My advice: don’t. At least not when a ten year-old child is peering over your shoulder.

But we did  make some good ones

Talking of ten year-olds, I’ve just been asked whether Mussolini’s stringing up in Piazzale Loreto was the inspiration for piñatas. Who’s to say?

It's a real garden, I promise

World peace? How was I going to design a garden based on that ‘theme’? In fact, don’t get me started on themes. Gardens are there to be used, to put plants in if you like them – a handy advantage as plants actually quite like growing in gardens. Talk of conceptual gardens makes me look around for the nearest collection of conceptual drawing rooms or conceptual kitchens – pretty hard to find and not much use if they do exist.

So, for this show garden in Japan next month, I’ve designed a peaceful space. Olive trees (this garden is the Italian entry, courtesy of mongrel blood and  an extra nationality), some benches and a pool that ripples just when you think it isn’t going to. So, spaces to sit, paths that take you places, trees for shade in the summer and structure in the winter, and some pretty flowers for us and for the buzzy things.

Call me old-fashioned, but that’s what I think makes a garden.

So when I had an email  a few months ago from  a very-nice sounding Phil from Japan, inviting me to take part in the second Gardening World Cup, building a fully-sponsored garden, I naturally accepted straight away, sending my bank details by return.

In April, September seemed a long long way away; suddenly after  what I actually think was rather a dreamy summer weather-wise, I’m getting emails from my lovely Facilitator in Nagasaki, showing me photos of each individual plant he’s sourced from my list. It’ll be interesting: some of them look like they’ve just been dug up: ie  in the pic I could see their roots and they weren’t in pots and were being held in the air by a helpful nurseryman.

I’m getting a crash course in hydraulics from Simon Percival – http://www.artinthelandscape.com - I’m clearly a promising student as he’s just told me he’s got a ticket to Nagasaki to oversee the installation. I think he’s worked with my type before.

I have chickens. Three of them.

It wasn’t meant to happen. It just did. The  little-used ground floor of the treehouse needed to earn its keep, so after staring at it for a while I had one of my lightbulb moments. Actually, I had two, but the first one involved a pizza oven and would have meant a chimney going up through the treehouse itself which felt a little extreme.

So, advised by our latest member of the team,  Julie The Poultry Guru, http://jothompson-garden-design.co.uk , we built a little house, and got the girls in.

As yet they are unnamed: they’re a surprise waiting for the children to come back from hols with the grandparents, who are once more horrified by this addition to the mix. “More smells in the garden!” gasped my mother – I’m not quite sure how I should take this.

My unintentionally shabby fence needs a repaint:

The dog needs a bath: this picture does not show adequately the black stockings of stagnant mud he was sporting. And I was running away as this stinking mass bundled towards me. (More smells… there’s a theme somewhere…)

But I have happy clients who indulged my wish to recreate a little bit of Renaissance architecture in a Kentish garden –  wot genius loci?

and I’m building a garden on the sand which I do not recommend unless you can sink 20m-long piles into the ground

Newsflash: the chickens have  been named. My daughter has selected Mary and Mayai (Swahili for ‘eggs’,  inspired by current reading material. Luckily she’d finished Lord of the Rings).

Son’s: Luis, in homage to the great striker.  I am informed that this name is  selected also as phonetically it is a tribute to Formula 1.

And yes, I have told him it’s a female.

At first, the stupidly weak internet connection was yet another reason to bang on about how frustrating I find rural life from time to time. Twelve years ago I sat with some girlfriends in some swish  regular London haunt, all of us dressed in our Joseph-Reiss combos – clearly the style forerunners of the Duchess of Cambridge. My announcement that I was moving to the country, to give my as-yet unmade children an Enid Blyton childhood, was met with screams of horror: “But darling, you’ll have to go to coffee mornings and take up gardening”. More screams.

And a dozen Springs later, here I am. One coffee morning was enough: the talk of pureed food and milestones was too much for me and I retreated into my home, took a look round, signed myself up on a course, got out of the home and proceeded to spend the next year in London doing something that was actually rather an appealing part of rural life: studying how to make sense of these great big spaces so many people here are surrounded by. And lo, the garden designer was born.

City clients always look at me as if I’m completely bonkers when I tell them how much I adore their 5-floored houses with one room at each level, and gardens the size of other people’s porches. I love it – the whole feel. I love the smell of pollution in the air and the kamikaze cyclists. I liked the fact that last time I was there, the people on the corner of the street threw their big 1980s telly out of the window just at the right time for me to see it happening but not to be flattened by it. I quite like the lunatics who walk along talking to imaginary people, until they start addressing their ramblings at me: this gets me into all sorts of existential dilemmas – am I imaginary like all the other people they’re talking to?

Three weeks staying in the city whilst  at  the Chelsea Flower Show, this year  making a garden for the sculptor Helen Sinclair,

is my idea of heaven, and there’s a huge dip-downer every year when I return to the beautiful, clean, quiet place In The Middle Of Nowhere, where I live and the place my children call home.

I have a love-hate relationship with the country, or maybe it’s a fair-weather relationship – I like it so much better when the sun’s out. After a couple of days of sulking at the quietness of it all, the quietness of it all starts to become rather attractive again.

It’s very, very dry

and those crop things on the right look very short to me. This pondering makes the countryside with all its farms and fields start to make sense – I’m actually thinking about it and worried about it, not  pulling a face at it simply because there isn’t a decent bookshop for miles and  trying to forget the fact that the best country pub I know is actually in Pimlico.

We’ve picked elderflowers and made cordial: I felt very “I’m a country-type just like you” when I asked for citric acid at the local chemists. The pharmacist had it under lock and key and told me it was being rationed: “Ah,” I replied, still with  that slap-my-thigh-I’m-so-rustic demeanour, ” I bet you know what I’m going to be up to this afternoon?!” She gave me a rather old-fashioned look.

Later when I mentioned on Twitter that there must be an epidemic of elderflower-cordial making, @LickedSpoon pointed out  that citric acid is used by junkies to pad out the mix, as it were.

Spot the dog

6am is a good time to go for a walk and appreciate what you have.  Coming back home, R. Venusta Pendula had decided to start doing her  very beautiful thing, although in reality she is in focus. A few hours later the flower was opened completely,  flat and white with the teeniest hint of pink. Almost mother of pearl.

Digitalis Serendipity is frilliness itself

And the best thing? I’ve discovered this morning that there’s a vineyard of Pinot Noir just around the corner. Have a look at Herbert Hall’s website http://www.herberthall.com/: Nick Hall is making sparkling wine in a lane near me. Heaven.