January Talk
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Some 39 people came to the talk on Wednesday 16th January at St Peter’s School to hear Penny Hearn, from ‘Planting With Penny’, and Jane Bingham from ‘The Cheshire Garden’, on what they did over a period of about 18 months to win a medal at the RHS Show at Tatton. They were awarded a Silver Guilt for which they are justly proud.
During their talk they showed slides to illustrate how they designed their garden, entitled “Future Spaces” when they had to submit the application, what they did to raise the necessary finance and how they constructed the garden in the quite short time allowed.
They were given a plot of agreed size with the turf removed and had to get on with it from there. This was not as straightforward as they first thought as they had laid it out on a sloping site beforehand and then found the site allocated was flat.
Penny and Jane talked about the problems of choosing plants far in advance of the show and how, what they had bought proved not to be of good enough quality because of the very dry summer weather, what they did to find alternatives and how helpful the other competitors were. The planting had to be perfect on judging day which was not easy as, due to the demand, there was a limited supply of water for watering. To be awarded a Silver Guilt on their first garden at Tatton was quite an achievement.
The theme of the garden was the pathway through Alzheimer disease, and we learned a lot about the stages sufferers go through. Penny and Jane made clever use of hospital beds and superb planting to demonstrate the journey.
They are planning to go through the whole process again in 2019 with a different theme and we wish them well.
