Gardeners’ World Live Small Space Gardens & Interview With Adam Frost

Come with me as I take a look at small space gardens at Gardeners World Live small space. I even manage to catch up and meet Gardeners World presenter and garden designer Adam Frost. From composting toilets, muted colour pallets to edible gardens. My tour of Gardeners’ World Live gives you a garden tour of several gardens and is full of gardening tips and tricks to give you plenty of small space garden ideas.

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Find out more about the garden designers below:

Magic Moments
Stephanie Haydon
https://www.instagram.com/homegrownwiththehaydons_/?hl=en

Our Safe Haven
Sarah Anderson
https://www.instagram.com/sanderson_garden/?hl=en

A Problem Shared Is A Problem Solved
Samantha Theakstone
https://www.instagram.com/samanthajanedecor/?hl=en

Following In My Footsteps
Leanne Wood
https://www.instagram.com/lee_guess_where/?hl=en

Lunatica
Joshua Fenton

Fenton Gardens Ltd.

My Magic Moments
Kitti Kovacs for QVC
https://www.kittikovacsgardens.com/

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours
Lynn James
https://www.lynnjamesgardendesign.co.uk/

Stop and Smell The Flowers
Julie Haylock
https://sandhurstgardendesign.co.uk/news

The Viewers Content Garden
Pip Probert

Front Page

00:00 Introduction
00:31 Client Brief
02:09 Colour In The Garden
10:29 Shady Gardens
15:50 Muted Colours
23:27 Water Retention
37:20 Judges Perspective
43:00 Interview With Adam Frost

coming up I take a seat at the chef’s table where I’ll be sitting down with the legend that is Adam Frost who’s going to talk us through his feature Garden here at BBC gardeners world live we’ll then take a deep dive all around the show picking up lots of small space gardening ideas for you guys so let’s get straight into it I’m relatively new to horiculture but over the last few years I’ve created several different show Gardens from small space borders all the way to massive show gardens like this Alleyway when it comes to show gardens it’s not just the case of you rocking up and then creating this Garden on the spot it takes months and months of planning and one thing that you have to do when you make a show Garden is you have to make a client brief and in that client brief it’s you stating to the judges essentially the direction that the garden is facing the sustainability elements of the garden and lots of other pieces of information that the judges will judge you against so you might have the most spectacular looking show Garden but if your garden does not match your client brief you will never be able to get a gold or platinum medal how gorgeous is this first Garden it’s called magic moments and it was designed by Stephanie Hayden the client brief for this Garden is all about Nostalgia it’s a about thinking back to your Gardens or allotments or parks in the past those simple moments like finding butterflies or searching for frogs born and of course teddy bear’s picnics the garden is all about trying to inspire people at the show to create their very own moments in their space and I’ve got to say this Garden is absolutely beautiful and I left feeling inspired feeling like I need to go back to my own garden and make some more magic moments without a shadow of a doubt in the poll that I put up on my YouTube page the part that you want to see the most at gardeners worldlife was the small space Gardens so without further Ado let’s go and see some of those small space [Music] Gardens hi I’m Sarah I’m actually a forest School lead and a deputy manager of a children’s nursery by day my parents have a small Nursery in nutsford so that’s where my passion for C of PS culture and gardening stems from and what made you decide to put in an application for gardeners well um friends and family really I have a really busy life I’ve got four children I work with children all day and for me I come home I just want to breathe I just just want to breathe a little bit so I’ll sort the the kids tea out and everything else and then I’ll Retreat to the garden um I never put music on or anything like that I know Paul my husband has got the music blaring but for me I want to hear the birds I want to hear the bees just be surrounded by really because that to me is is my sort of safe space so talk me through the design here because this is a really small space what what size is this border it’s 3 m x 3 m timber frame but the actual planting space is 2.7 by 2.7 the golden question is did you know that before you started I did come on there we go I did did that sway me from bringing so many plants no we didn’t yes so the one thing that I said when I saw this Garden first time was could you fit any more plants in here probably I mean probably no I don’t I don’t think you probably could it’s not just you know color planting I believe there’s a sensory element there’s a sensory yeah so um the lavender and Carrick path I knew straight away I wanted to use the Coxwell chippings in the the hard landcaping uh because they’re quite bright and St and I knew although I was having all these colors it is a small space and when you start to compact a small space if you’ve not got something bright to lift it then it can become quite kind of it looks tight and small and compact so that’s why I wanted the kind of really bright Stone and I knew I wanted the lavender path because the IDE idea was I wanted to be able to walk through the lavender path and bring the lavender with me to the bench so I could sort of have that scent in the air um but the purple against the um the stone was really really Stark so I was like what can I use to soften it um so I thought oh I know I’ll use a grass and then the next minute I thought oh my container pond maybe I’ve had a CAU and contain upon the bronze grasp is really going to U the bronze car is really going to pick that up so when you were designing it you had I guess the color from the the 410 Pond you had the carrot SES and then you’ve also got the cars kind of dotted in so I guess you’re getting that triangle of color that triangle of color so I had a bit of a gap there and I was like I don’t want to put anything too big and bulky in there cuz I want to see the carton through you know the front of the border and then I just thought actually hang on I’ve put the bronze cars here to pick up from the carton let’s pop some there and like you say it just sort of like car it through then when I’m in the garden in addition to the sensory elements the color you’ve managed to squish a lot into this small space yes so we’ve even got the container Pond but you’ve also got some height as well from these trees what are these trees they’re Betula pendula which is a weeping Birch the reason I went for the Weeping Birch is because it is a small space um and quite often when you cut a tree back at the top you get that like really straight linear line on it and you change the whole shape of the tree and then that really changes the shape of your space and your garden whereas with these you can just pop them off at one of the nodules I mean I have on a couple of these to get them to the kind of that height I wanted them cuz I just didn’t want them too tall um and that’s why I used the we ping cuz I just thought no matter how small the space you can use these in that then cuz they’re not going to get too big they’re manageable you can prune them back and uh yeah and just keep on top of them but thank you so much for that very well and of course congratulations on the gold thank you very much yeah I’m I’m completely shocked by the go this year the beautiful borders all have the same theme which is share your space and what I love is that these guys have really packed in the color let’s take a look at another Garden Leanne wood designed a garden that’s all about about engaging children and connecting them to Nature I’m a primary school teacher by trade who has a love of gardening so tell us what is your client brief for this Garden so the whole idea was um sharing your space and as soon as I heard that it kind of evoked some memories for me um so I imagined a family and just wanted to show that you could do a lot within a small space but also educate children as well as it feeling like your own Haven as well um not too many sort of plastic toys anywhere or um a space to learn in really is what I wanted so looking at the planting the planting is quite dense but it’s also super super colorful yeah there’s a reason for that so um it’s kind of a eclectic Cottage border um and that’s purposeful it’s quite densely piled because I wanted it to be a a child’s view of a a packed border when I was um younger and my grandparents Garden I remember sitting on a bench and it’s sort of being enveloped by flowers and so it’s kind of a a packed border for a reason um and the color palette is just one that I love I love cut flowers and bringing them into home and this is kind of just my ideal really so it’s not just this really beautiful color palette that you have in this Garden there’s also a really beautiful bit of hard Landscaping here can you tell us a little bit more about that yeah so on the hard Landscaping I really wanted to use reclaim material so there’s brick edging from reclaimed bricks there’s an area on the sensory part made from log slices from a a fallen tree from our garden um but the most important part for me was the um cobbled path which is reminiscent of a cobal area in my grandparents Garden amazing and then talk us about this tree because if you want a statement this is it yeah so um yeah that’s another feature um it was a real key point that I wanted a tree in the corner that was really characterful quite gnarly um quite fairy tale looking it’s a sort of a picking an apple uh Snow White Style and you can imagine it’s been there for years and years and years it’s got lots of stories to tell that tree it really does it really adds to to the Garden I think it was a real spectacular find thank you if the viewers at home wanted to implement any of this into their small spaces where would they get started I think it’s just taking little elements so um I started by thinking about the tree and what I could have around it so that’s a cable reel and it’s it’s really easy to do um just half a cable Rael and cut in half um and a a sink put into it or a little bowl put into it um but there’s just little elements I mean the log slices would be a great thing to do um even if you just had a small area or put them into the Border it doesn’t have to be sunken into a path like that even if it was just on a Border’s Edge or even just like the bug the bug Hotel underneath the bench is is a great addition to any Garden really is just to promote the wildlife and things and that’s just from reclaimed um French drains and and slices been put into them so easy wow I think it’s absolutely tremendous you should be so proud of yourself and I believe you won a platinum I did yeah which was very unexpected but um yeah super shocked with that but extremely delighted to have it listen I think you’re probably the only person he was shot cuz this Garden is stunning I’ve picked these Gardens in particular because they are so densely packed but it’s not overwhelming and there is lots and lots of color so hopefully that will give you guys some ideas about what you could do with your small space but I did find one Garden here which takes color to an absolute another level I cannot wait for you guys to see this one the sponsors of the beautiful border section at BBC gardeners Wildlife is QVC and the fabulous Kitty Cox has designed this Garden called my garden escape the garden is all about escaping to Tranquility but it’s also about bold vibrant colors and just look at the furniture as well this Garden this Garden is absolutely insane not only are there pops of color everywhere they’ve even included height with these three gigantic Palms the garden you know what I’m just going to let the garden do the talking for itself enjoy now we’ve seen a lot of color in these border Gardens so far however I found one Garden that actually focuses in on black and white I think you just need to see the garden this Garden is all about Ying or Yang you sit where you like and the planting reflects your mood you have the deeper darker tones which lead up the taller lighter pallette but then also there’s a quarten bridge which acts as a bridge between the two Ying or Yang how clever is that but this wasn’t the only Garden that was set in two halves I found one Garden that was all about pure Sun but also pure shade my name is carlen Osborne my company is carlen Osborne garden designs and this is my garden share my space with nature and the whole sort of ethos of the garden is that it’s an a garden that’s friendly to Wildlife but also one that is beautiful for people to enjoy and it’s very pretty for me there are two areas the first one is the shady area which you can see behind us here these are all shade loving plants and also I have focusing here on texture on pops of color which are then replicated in the sunny area here this is predominantly providing habitat for wildlife and for insects for little hedgehogs we have one here there is a dead hedge at the back as well which is a really good feature for people that don’t necessarily have a you know they don’t want to compost wood which is not a good idea so you can create a dead hedge there um which again is a Haven for wildlife we then move across into the sunny area and this is really providing food for bees it’s providing pollen and it’s providing nectar as well and it’s also very pretty I’ve ensured that for my wildlife in the garden there is also water cuz that’s an absolutely essential criteria so you need the habitat you need the food and you need the water as well so it’s that that trifecta in order to have a successful garden you need to have all of those you have need to have those as well and I think when we think about Shea Gardens people think that they’re going to be really boring but what I love here is there’s still so much color but like you say there’s a lot of texture is this something that we could do in a container yes of course anything will grow any sort of plant will grow in a container as long as the container is large enough that it has the right compost for the plant and that it has drainage holes and if it’s lifted off the ground to facilitate that drainage then that would benefit the plant and it would it would Thrive thank you so much I think it’s absolutely beautiful thank [Music] you now one thing that we are not great at doing sometimes when it comes to small space Gardens is thinking about all year round seasonality now I found one small space Garden here in the beautiful border section which is all about bringing color in but also having some Evergreen planting mixed into the planting plan this Garden is designed to be a community garden and this little seating area here is designed to be a space where the community gardeners can come sit out and enjoy the space but there’s also a mixture of some shade loving plants but also some evergreen shrubs so that this Garden will have its form and structure for all four seasons no but you guys just look at the height of of these Fox girls they’re taller than me now a lot of the gardens that we’ve seen so far are super super colorful but I am really conscious that not everybody loves a whole cacophony of color so I found a couple of gardens with a little bit more of a muted color palette but that doesn’t stop anything because these Gardens are absolutely spectacular my name is Lyn James I’m Lyn James garden design I have been a qualified Garden designer for about the last year and is this your first show G this is my first show guard yeah ever yeah so talk us through the client brief what what was the concept behind this Garden so the concept behind the garden is that it is um a path that goes across the border or boundary between two rear Gardens so if you imagine TWO Urban rear Gardens um and the two Neighbors on either side um have a shared interest in gard and you know sometimes they might have a cup of tea or a glass of wine or something like that so it’s just a way for them to connect connect yeah to conect connect without going around the front door you I absolutely love that yeah but what’s really interesting to me with this Garden is we’ve seen a lot of borders and they are they are a cacophony of color but this color here is it’s a very similar color palette everything uh is yellow white was that intentional yes yeah so that started off um because I absolutely love the cosmos sanos the very pale yellow Cosmos I absolutely love that and I always have it in my garden every year and that’s what started it off so I just wanted I love the combination of pale yellow and white bright yellow not so much but if you stick to the sort of very pale crrosy yellow then I think that goes really nicely together and so that was the basis for it and I’ve you know I’ve stuck to it more or less you have to be quite disciplined um but I’m very happy with the way it’s turned out and lots of people have said it’s very calming yes um yeah so I’m very happy so is this your planting style would you do this at home have this muted color palette yeah I I mean I our garden at home you know cuz my husband’s a gardener as well so he has to have some say in it so but we we’ve um we took down a shed a while ago and that’s so that’s opened up a whole new area of garden the shed the shed was falling down so um so we now have a new little area of garden and so that is is now white and yellow but it’s pale yellow it’s not bright yellow so yeah so some of these parts will be going back home little corner of garden that’s so interesting and so um I just don’t know how you are so disciplined to be able to go to a nursery and not come back with a whole heap of colors you just stick to that it’s very difficult yeah it’s so tempting but it really pays off um so I think you’ve given me a little bit of food for thought there and probably quite few of the viewers at home cuz we are all tempted to see those red stickers in the garden center go and pick up whatever we can the natural fact we could have something really cohesive I’ve got one last question for you this is obviously an inground Garden is this translatable into a container yes definitely you know if you’ve got a reasonable size container you just pick out your favorite plants and you can certainly achieve the same effect I think it’s good good idea to have something tall um you know maybe like a loopin or the um the sort of Airy uh Buttercup type plant and then also something sort of midlevel and then something spilling over the edge of the container as well I think that will translate very well thank you thank you so much and well done on your first show Garden [Music] [Music] okay my name is Julie halock and my garden design business is santz garden design and we’re based in Yul in Somerset thank you so much so thank you for having us in your garden it is so beautiful for what was your client brief my client brief for this Garden was to create a space where you could sit with a friend or family member and actually physically talk to one another just like we are now Jason to each other yeah really talk to one another yeah that actual that long lost um ability that we all have now instead of using social media computers laptops mobile phones Etc so hence no Wi-fi signs in the garden just to leave those in the house and to just sit for a while amongst nature and just enjoy SPS all around you well this is somewh that you would definitely enjoy sitting I think what I love the most is the color it’s all kind of cohesive was that on purpose absolutely yeah it’s it’s quite a um a soft color palette really with the pinks and the purples and the blue but I’ve used little pops of orange with the GM uh through the garden and also the ailia um King Edward as well which is quite a low growing one that just gives that pop of pale yellow through the garden so your eye kind of follows that on a journey through the space and I think what I would say as well is it it doesn’t feel like you are trapped it’s you got the height in there but you kind of feel like you’re being hugged whilst you’re satting here glad you’re saying that because that was one of the things that I’d said that with the the planting around the garden with the Amalia tree there it sort of partially screens you from the world that you step through the moon gate to the back of the garden where the seating is and underneath the silver birch tree so you’ve got a little bit of shade should it be a hot day like for the first day this week it is um and that you sort of scream from the rest of the world to just have that that conversation with that that special friend and I remember that I I think was it last year you did a container garden at the rhs Chelsea flower show we did yes we did the Maran space to learn Garden can we actually create something like this in containers I’m guessing if we had pots that were different Heights or something can we achieve this Garden in container form absolutely Jason yes you could um I would suggest that you use the largest containers you can because that actually helps with um less watering the bigger containers that you have but certainly depending on location you would have to consider the plants within this so at the back of the garden I’ve got a quite shady area with the ferns so if you had a shady Garden North facing Garden you could use a collection of ferns within a container equally if you had a sunny south facing Garden or an area West or east facing Garden that got the sun depending on which time of the day then yes you could have a collection of those plants within that space make sure you’ve got good drainage um and yeah absolutely you could use um a collection of these plants within that easily thank you so much um and thank you for having me and well done is it silver Merit we had a silver Merit yes and absolutely delighted wow congratulations thank you very much thank you still to come I’m going to be talking to Gardener World presenter and garden designer Adam Frost but first we’re going to take a look at the correlation between a narrow boat and a show Garden [Music] [Music] my name is Josh Fenton and I’m the designer of lunatica who is your client in your client brief and what is the whole garden about my client is an older couple with beginnings of sort of mobility issues very into herbal lore and they’re also very very keen to to think about water conservation a lot of these plants they’re actually Edibles is that right yeah so all of the planting in lunatica is either edible or medicinal um we also tried to separate the planting so that um the higher raised bed planting is drought tolerant and the lower bed planting is not necessarily water loving but a plant that won’t get through a drought by itself okay so it all has a wicking bed underneath which the plants can access um in times of drought and then in terms of water retention so if somebody has a garden and they want to try and conserve as much water as possible how does this Garden help or highlight uh what you could do if you had a garden of this size so our our kind of offerings are using roofs and the patio as catchment zones and funneling all of that into this which is a water feature but it’s actually a reservoir as well it’s a 5ft DE um so it can hold quite a lot of water we tried to reduce evaporation by having a roof over it um and then this Reservoir can then be used to top up the wicking beds um in times of drought so how would they go about topping it out with with this so I have a small pump in the bottom which is dedicated to just topping up the wicking beds and then it has a separate pump which Powers the um water feature that’s insane okay so I’ve got a ask this question as a designer you are more of a landscape designer is that right yeah so did you come up with the concept of the garden first or was it this element that that came up first how how did you start designing this Garden I knew I wanted to do something about water conservation um it’s such a pressing issue so much of our water is just leaving our Gardens too fast and in times of heavy downpours that’s overwhelming the sewer systems which is what leads to um the sewers pumping into our Rivers when they shouldn’t it’s not to say that there’s nothing that they could do about that either but there’s things that we can start to do to try and slow it down keep it use it before it goes back into the system I’ve always wanted to do a circular waterfall um and so it kind of developed from there really to me it seemed like quite a practical and obvious solution to kind of to do this I can tell you that that is not the case like I would never have dreamed of this yeah I I think it’s gone through a few stages of refinement to get to this point really and so I I wanted to bring in some Moon iconography because of we moved onto a boat um just before Christmas on a tidal River so we’re now we get lifted up with a tid and we get put back on the mud twice a day and I started to kind of engage with the tide Tim tables how that’s influenced by the moon the shift of the Moon across the month and the year and it fascinates me and I it just seems so the influence of the moon on water in my life is so immediate that it just seems like a very obvious link I think include it into a garden yeah I think a lot of people think it’s a bit Airy fairy spiritual but it it it’s IR refutable for thousands of years twice a day the moon has pushed millions of liters of water around our planet um so that’s why we have the phases of the moon as the Stepping Stones around the plunge pool H each one of these is a phase of the M yeah so we’ve got um kesen half gibbus new Gibb us half present full which again seemed very obvious to me I wanted it to be quite subtle I didn’t want to have like little Moon ornaments everywhere um do you know so I I love this Garden just visually anyway but the more that you talk about this garden and the more that you just think that that’s a normal thought to have I I literally blown away and then obviously you spoke before we’ve got the green roofs but it’s not it doesn’t just stop there in terms of you know really useful things you’ve also got a composting toilet is that right yeah so again that come up so because we’ve moved on to the boat we now have a composting toilet so our choices on the boat for toilet waste were we have a tank you could have a tank under the bed so you can have a flushing toilet but it all collects under where you sleep and then what most people do where we are is then just pump it raw sewage into the river where you have a cassette chemical toilet so you’re then adding a chemical to something which is actually full of nutrients and then putting that into sewers to be then cleaned up or do what we do which is we have a composting toilet separates the solids from the urine and then you empty the solids into your composter and make sure it’s the right temperature and it breaks down they’ve done tests um soil versus composted human poo and there’s generally less p pathogens in the human compost than there is in normal soil wow because it’s reached a good enough heat that you’ve killed things whereas that General soils it’s not safe like to eat or to you know it’s it’s full of little things that can get you so I think it’s just the ick factor for people but it having been doing it now for quite a few months it especially if you’ve had kids as well and you’ve done enough nappies or you got a dog and you’re used to pick FL it’s not a big deal just get on with it if it works it works and if it saves you some money in the long run and so that that was why I wanted to bring one here to kind of have that conversation the reaction from the public is quite funny like some people are like this is great some people like just laugh and walk away and yeah it’s it’s a funny thing but I do think it needs talking about um every flush tends to waste about 9 lers of drinking water so we’re we’re processing our water to clean it to a drinking standard and then half the time someone’s only done a Wii and then we say goodbye to 9 liters which then has to be clean to the same standard just to be used on another flush which is it’s a huge waste of time and resources really so that that was it’s such a big part of the conversation for me it makes total sense now now that you’re saying it I think I think that’s really awesome the way that you’ve managed to incorporate that organically into the design of the Garden as well as your passion now for the moon and ties I think is really really tremendous and I think your passion has probably Shone through which is why the garden has done as well as it has done I believe you got a gold is that right yeah got gold no no wonder thank you so much for your time and uh yeah good luck in the future yeah cheers cheers you see we went off rails but like that that stuff is like so interesting cheers Josh and his garden are a prime example of why I started the series I think it’s so fascinating to hear directly from the designers to see what influen them to create these amazing spaces that in turn give us inspiration Josh ridy put himself out there out of his comfort zone to come sit and talk to us so Josh thank you look I don’t just come to these shows for fun it’s actually work too so I’ve got talks up on the get grown stage and then over on the urban stage pretty much uh every day of the show at 1: p.m. and at 300 p.m. so I’m not here just to buy plants on the get growing stage I was talking all about how to grow in small spaces and that happened to be a massive Trend here at gardeners wildli but I found a small space garden with some unique ways of growing in an urban environment my name is Phoebe and this is my beautiful border eat the city this is an urban Garden Urban gardening is the kind of gardening that I do um and I think it’s really important to Showcase that Urban gardening can be beautiful um and people can grow vegetables and things like that in an urban space and have companion planting and take ideas from permaculture um which is where the spiral came from um and it means that you can have lots of different kinds of plants in a really small space so for example at the top of the Border um it’s sunny dry planting and at the bottom of the Border it’s kind of more shady kind of wetter because it’s also about water retention all that kind of thing so when you water from the top it travels down the spiral and you’ve picked up all of this knowledge but actually how long have you been gardening um so I start I’m training so I do a work and retrain as a gardener course uh it’s 14 hours a week for a year um which I do at plant Manchester um so Urban gardening um and I started that in November so yes started my course in November applied for this in January and it’s June now so that’s seven months of gardening I think what a lot of people have picked up on when they have come and seen the Garden in person at the show is Corner Planters triangular Corner PL that fit in and how much you can actually fit into that small space because then you’re using every ounce of space and also in the spiral it’s vertical growing um which is really good for small spaces so I’m guessing with the corner planter if for example somebody had a shady Corner what they could do is build one of these Corner Planters and I built them for free the wood is all reclaimed so I knew that I wanted Corner planters and that was kind of the first part of the plan and then I went oh how am I going to build them um and I was really lucky to um have some contacts that work with this kind of wood quite a lot so I said have you got any leftover pieces from you know jobs that you’ve done and they said yes lovely here you go and it’s all cut to length as well and I said oh fabulous thank you very much um and then this would actually um they’d been taken out of um Pond as they they were Big Steaks and we cut them down they’d fallen over and he said why don’t you use those and I said fabulous thank you amazing so you got that whole planter for free yeah all four of them apart from the screws uh thank you so much I think you’ve done an amazing job and I believe that you were awarded a silver medal silver medal yeah amazing well congratulations I think youve done a fantastic job thank you so much [Music] the designer for this Garden had a very challenging client brief and not only did she have a challenging client brief this designer is also a judge so I thought it’ be really fascinating to hear a little bit more about the garden but also what it’s like to be a judge here at a flower show like BBC gardeners world life so I’m pit proit and this is the viewers content Garden it is beautiful now my first question to each designer has always been uh what’s the client brief but I believe that that’s not quite the the case for you here yeah it’s a bit strange this one um so basically we wanted to showcase some of the video clips that the viewers send in because it’s become a really popular thing since Co everyone’s been doing bits and pieces and filming themselves and it gets shown on the on the program and it’s so popular so I was given four two of which were structures um one was a greenhouse made out of shower screens uh the second was a lady who had an amazing kind of allotment and um uh Greenhouse um posing shed so that was the inspiration for the structure in our garden a combination of the two but then we we also had two uh viewers that made things so we had Hedgehog ladders which are tucked away in the back and we also had um uh fluff hangers which have been really popular and they’re hanging from the trees wow oh yeah they’re all full of sheep’s wo it’s h it’s really nice that is awesome and so then you’ve then created this and talk us through like the the planting plan here so I just wanted it to be a real mixture and and no set color scheme because this Garden is meant to be the garden that Jack built the everyday Garden that’s just developing as we go along and so it’s based on plants that you might just go out and say oh you know what I really like that doesn’t match anything I’ve got but I really like it and so therefore we’ve got bright blues and yellows and oranges and and reds and everything just kind of is slotted in next to each other it’s a big bold kind of um border and and then this well there’s lots of things to be honest but I think the the main idea was that there was no just one plant type either so we’ve got kind of alpines perennials got um climbers a couple of shrubs SED around we’ve got herbs veg um lots of bedding cuz that’s something that again people just can’t resist can they with the colors and we’ve even got airplants hanging in the greenhouse and you know I remember seeing your garden at tatan last year this is very far removed from your normal style so was that really challenging for you to actually break your mold and have a bit of chaos gardening it yeah it was um because designed it in the same way and I when you’re designing it you kind of you know what you could do but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to find because the other side to the brief was that everything had to be recycled so it it’s different when you’ve got a big pile of of stuff and you think oh I could make that from this and I could do shelves from that but actually when when you’re designing something and then you got to find the stuff that’s very different very very different so although the features are all here they’re not necessarily exactly what we thought they were going to be but it just grew arms and legs and the more time it spent in the skip the more people got to see me and they started to bring the rubbish to me which was the that was when we had the turning point that is awesome now we were speaking about the the client brief earlier but actually I understand that you do judging as well yeah I do a little bit of judging for for some of the other gardeners well shows obviously not this one and how was that transition between coming being a designer to then moving to a judge could you see things from both angles or do you have to strictly stick to your judging criteria yeah I think you do see things differently um but what I actually notice is I’m quite harsh and you know what I didn’t I can’t believe that because normally I’m I I wouldn’t be like that but sometimes I’ve said oh but don’t you think and and other the people just look at me go that’s so strict oh I didn’t want to be that person I’m toning it down well you have to give us a tea so what happens when you are judging a garden and there’s a difference of opinion how do you resolve that issue between the judges a lot of talking it through really and and also there’s normally quite a mix of people on the panel so some might be designers some might be Growers um some some might specialist specialize in construction and I think that combination of people with loads of different experiences um you kind of when somebody makes their point you you understand a little bit more so if it is something to do with the hard Landscaping then if that person takes charge and and explains why then generally you you understand where they’re coming from and a lot of the time you can look at the gardens and you you get a gist for what what they are and everyone’s here for a different reason so even if the person themselves doesn’t fully understand why they got what they got hopefully once the judges come around and they give you that bit of feedback you know you can start to soak it all up in and understand why I think pip had probably the toughest job at the show she didn’t have any control over her client brief but she still managed to come out with a platinum award well done pep let’s go and take a look at the feature Garden here at gardeners world live and if we’re lucky we might bump into the designer who could potentially give us some tips and tricks for our very own spaces this Garden is called the chef’s table and it’s all about plot to plate in fact in here there is a working kitchen for kitchen de demonstrations the garden is designed to make us rethink how we used to grow our food in our Gardens but I think there’s somebody who could explain this a little bit better than me Adam thank you so much for taking the time to come and sit with me that’s absolute pleasure mate we tried to do it earlier on didn’t then I wish off somewhere else yeah we got there that’s all that matters this is not Adam’s first time at the rodeo in fact he’s show gardens before although it has been a while since his last one my last Chelsea Garden was 2015 but I met you what a few weeks ago atel at the Chelsea flow show yeah yeah so I haven’t done one kids were I’ve got four kids so they were all quite young um and Mrs Frost was getting slightly cheesed off with me being away for long periods of time so I stopped doing them um but yeah but we’ve come back this year and I Gardener World Life For Me has been um it’s where I first cut my teeth doing show gens so they asked me to come back and it just seemed a lovely opportunity really so I’ve just done like a little section explaining to the viewers how show gardens work yeah in terms of client brief and and that kind of thing so for this Garden what was your client brief like who was your client what’s nice about this this wasn’t judge so the client so what I do in my head is I make the person up before I design it so this one was um it was a chef um male or female didn’t matter but they’ bought themselves a house um and then at the end of the garden one Sunday they went down there this is how my w little head works for right she just sit with me they went down they started clearing it and they found five little apple trees old apple trees and then they carried on over the next few weekends and they found the sound of water and they realized that it was bubbling up and they made a stream and then they brought the family down because they were quite pleased about the work that they did and started clearing I thought oh actually a bit like now the sun’s nice maybe we could build somewhere that we could come down and cook you know and then the chef decides that they build the building I might have better grow something to eat you know and first of all what they do is they start planting veggies in straight lines because that’s what they learned from their grandparents and then the chef gets a little bit more confident and starts going why am I trying growing vegetables in straight lines I don’t need to so he starts into plant him with the herbs and the herbaceous and the Run of beans are coming up here and some’s coming up here and you realizing that actually they’re just all plants just Chuck them in together I think that’s like one of the the most striking Parts about this Garden is that we don’t see the formulaic lined you’ve inter corrupt everything yeah I mean and then that’s it why you know why do we plant vegetables in straight lines because we followed agriculture you know and and when we’re gardening we don’t need we don’t need to work at that speed we don’t need big machinery to tidy through um and I’ve been doing it it for quite a lot of years at home um and what you find straight away if you interplant your your veggies your herbaceous your herbs and whatever you don’t lose so much water okay straight away that’s the first thing that jumps out on me because you cover the ground you know and you know it’s like if you put things in straight lines you leave a lot of open ground you lose more water and then the second thing um I’ve the problems with pest diseases drops because you’re hiding things away you start to companion plant without even realizing half the time that you’re actually companion planting and and when you look at the wedges and look at hers you know some of these are they’re beautiful plants you know that kale there behind me why can’t that be a border plant it’s lovely sort of crinkled Leaf you know that texture as well so changing everything yeah exactly you know that’s the problem example there’s a kale sitting in the back there yeah that would do what it does annually there’s then a little bit of parsley in front of that and you look at the texture then of the geranium and then you’ve got the agist stach which makes wonderful tea another kale up the bat then you’ve got the Salvia you know then you got the Rosemary next to it there’s no reason why in it the daily this you can eat you know so yeah yeah you can eat da you eat the flowers of the daily yeah amazing and so for me I think this is probably something that we need a little bit more of is that intercropping and and planting things together I totally not agree with you I think one you said to me you know I met you at Chelsea and I said to you earlier on I I you made me smile cuz you you came in and you you talk with so much passion um and I didn’t want to sort of deflate you at the time you know I think and you left the room and I said yeah I’ve been talking about that for 30 years but but but I didn’t mean that in a negative what I loved about it was the fact that actually I ain’t going to be talking about it forever am I and you’re you in my head the Next Generation you’re the person actually you can pick it up you can carry on shouting about it so it was a bit like I to you I worked for a fellow called Jeff Hamilton who 30 odd years ago was Peete free organic and talking about stop destroying the countryside you know so as a 21 year old that’s what my experience was so I’ve always gardened in that way and it was just nice that you’re now trying to do that in the urban setting which seems brilliant thank you thank you it I I feel like we’re slowly moving in the right direction certain companies certain developers are taking notice but I think it’s just trying to find a way to make sure that they understand that it can be beneficial to them even if it’s a USB that they can put their ramp prices up or whatever as long as we can get these spaces cuz I think people desperately need Green Space yeah they do I I think if I’m really honest I think you know if we really looked at our planning laws properly um and and and changed things adjusted things um and stop worrying all the time about how much money we make and maybe leaving a planet behind us that’s slightly better than the one we found um everybody could play their part really so so you keep on going in and talking to them and telling them you know I will do I’ll do my best anyway I don’t want to hold you for too much longer but thank you so much for your time absolute pleasure my friend thank you cheers cheers wow what a moment I can’t even describe how I’m feeling right now but thank you Adam for taking the time and it just feels like a massive responsibility with someone like Adam handing over the torch but um I’m confident that that change will be made and we’ll see more green spaces in our towns and cities it is 400 p.m. and the selloff has begun and if you don’t know 400 p.m. on the last day of every flower show is when all the prices come down or some of the exhibitors will sell off some of their plants from their exhibit so that they can earn a little bit of cash back but also take less home I just want to say a special thank you to Mr Frost who agreed to do an interview with me he actually didn’t have to do that at all he told me that he would come back at 5: or halfast 5: and we catch up and do a little bit of filming after he did his talk and he stayed true to his word and he came back after a long day of presenting and doing all sorts of bits and pieces is and coming back after hours just to sit and have a chat with me um I’m really really grateful and that to me is the mark of a Legend So Frosty thank you very much anyway I hope that you have enjoyed this video it is super in depth I’ve hope that you’ve enjoyed hearing from the designers and picked up one or two tricks that you can use in your very own small spaces the next show I’m going to be attending is the Hampton cour flower festival or whatever it’s called Uh so if you have any opinions if you want to see anything in particular let me know in the comments below and I will make sure to go and hunt down those topics for you hopefully I will see you all again very very soon bye there was so much going on I didn’t even get to talk about the chickens anyway you guys thank you to all of the designers who took part in this video and hopefully I will see you all again very very soon bye [Music]