A Brace of Embraces

* I was invited to the press preview of Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to visit the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

The Urban Gardens were a new feature at the 2024 show. They were both designed by Cherry Carmen but the gardens were brought to life by two teams of landscapers both vying to win the competition hosted by World Skills UK. Each garden was designed to embrace issues related to climate change - one focussed on Shady & Wet, and yeap you’ve guessed it, the other on Sunny & Dry. But which would win out?

Determined to have its own say, the weather wreaked havoc with both of the garden signs - the wind managed to rip the board from the wood for the Shady & Wet sign - ironic much? And both signs ended up laying down alongside its garden - you couldn’t make it up could you?

Shady & Wet

This garden was landscaped by Anna Mcloughlin and Ceri Furber and showcases a waterlogged or boggy garden. It’s a north-facing garden so doesn’t get the sun to dry it out, and so the planting demonstrates how to work with your garden’s reality and how by using correct techniques and plant choices you can still achieve something quite special.

I liked the planting in the Shady & Wet garden and I think that each of us can do more to work with what our garden gives us - just because we like a plant, it doesn’t mean it will thrive in the space we have - and we have to learn and respect that. In our previous garden we rarely had any bedding plants, save for a few around the patio, as there just wasn’t the light they needed given the large shrubs and trees we had. It’s something we came to accept, and obviously saved a lot of work trying to force things to work where they really weren’t happy.

Sunny & Dry

The landscapers for this garden were Aimee Copland and Jacob Mercer, and as you’d expect from its name this garden is south-facing and so becomes very hot in summer. Once again the planting and design has been adapted to work with, rather than fight against, the garden’s conditions.

This garden has a lot going for it and the plants appealed to both MOH and I. In fact this was MOH’s favourite garden in the show, which kind of surprised me and kind of didn’t. He likes strong sculptural plants - and has his eye on a banana plant, which while I’d be happy to have in the garden, so far I’ve resisted as I don’t think we’re quite ready to care for it, or have the supporting plants and infrastructure around it which I think it will need (but that’s a whole other post!)

I do think that there is something to learn from the dry gardens that we’ve seen, both here in this garden and previously at the show and in other gardens, such as the RHS Hyde Hall - and I think that is definitely something we’ll be incorporating into our future garden. I think more and more of us will do that too especially as the climate continues to change.

Oh, and I almost forgot - the Sunny & Dry garden was awarded a gold medal, so I guess that garden won, and I’m not disappointed by that.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was just as good as I expected! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to the show - I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Post Comment Love 16 - 18 May

Hello there, and welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

The warmer weather has been great, and don’t get me wrong, but boy isn’t it hot? As someone who’s body ‘runs warm’ most of the time I’ve been feeling it. It’s a consequence of my overactive thyroid but it seems to be more than normal in this warm spell, though thankfully none of the other signs of a misbehaving thyroid have appeared alongside it. I think I know why I’m feeling so warm, but it’s unlikely to be a proven scientific fact, so I’ll keep it to myself!

One thing I am enjoying though in this heat is iced coffees, which is odd as I’m not a big coffee drinker at all. It’s unusual for me to have one coffee a week, let alone a day usually - though this isn’t my theory on why I’m overheating, but I suspect there’s a link here too.

Anyway, I hope you’ve had some good weather too and have been able to enjoy it, coffee or not, hot or cold!

Reminiscing through the retro clothes of the 1971 Boy Friend film

When we visited the Fashion and Textile Museum to see The Biba Story I was pleased to find a smaller exhibition dedicated to The Boy Friend which included memorabilia and more from the 1971 film by Ken Russell, featuring Twiggy. Of course I’m way too young to remember the film - I was four in 1971 - but much later in 1982 The Boy Friend was our senior school production, so it holds a special memory for me. I didn’t have a big part in our production, but like many of us in the chorus I knew the words to the majority of the songs, and the scenes.

And my biggest claim to fame for the school production? I provided the ‘peasant-style dress’ which Hortense wore in one of the scenes. It came from C&A and I wish it was a dress I’d kept, though of course 1982 was a long time ago, and well, I’m not sure I’m the same size today as I was then!

But you know, memories and all that.

But anyway, back to the exhibition. I knew that Twiggy was in the film, and I knew it was directed by Ken Russell. I didn’t know that his wife Shirley Russell was responsible for the costume design, nor that the fashion at the time was obsessed with a nostalgic glamour, with a camp twinkle in its eye. But I do now.

It was fantastic to see the Pierette and Pierot sketches, they became a big thing in the eighties, with the designs on everything from clothing to bedding, stationery, stickers and more. I had a duvet cover and pillowcase, I remember and I still have a ring binder folder adorned with the design - and I’m sure there was more.

Twiggy’s Pierette dress was remade in her size for the film from an original 1920s costume in Shirley’s collection; these were favourite character costumes for fancy dress which was popular in the 1920s.

One of the exhibition boards said that Shirley’s hunt for original clothing became an all consuming occupation which the whole family were involved in, and she became known as ‘second-hand Rose’ for dressing her five children in vintage clothes, and this at a time when second-hand goods were still tainted with the stigma of poverty, it was a radical fashion statement.

The striped shirt and skirt by Biba in the photo above was from Shirley’s personal wardrobe and fitted perfectly with the 1930’s clothing, which no doubt is the (or one of) the connections for this being shown alongside the Biba Story.

Some of the designs above wouldn’t look out of place in today’s high street - the chevron jumper and 1920s patterned two piece above especially. It was great to reminisce about our senior school production, but I think it’ll be a while before the drop waisted dress, and hopefully the Pierette/Pierot costumes reappear - though never say never, all fashion seems to come around again at some point…