The Chelsea Diaries: Progress all areas

This week has seen a number of breakthroughs in locating items I have been tracking for the last few months.

On Monday I found just the perfect stone mullion window – except that it is the other side of the country. It will require a little modification but should combine well with the stone walling which we already have set aside together with the bricks. As part of a large set of windows from one house I was worried that I may have to buy six more to get just the one I wanted but it appears that they are not a fast selling line – as the layer of green algae and moss seems to suggest.

I was beginning to think that the only old pedestrian iron gates available were light-weight until I spotted one at a reclamation yard in Oxfordshire last week which looks just the part for between our heavy brick pillars – at a price!  What’s more, it was described as ‘circa 1910 and from Chelsea’ so what better for a garden to celebrate the centenary of the Chelsea Flower Show, it was obviously meant to be.

The Sussex oak frame is under construction and I am looking forward to seeing it laid out next week. The plan is to meet the thatcher with the frame set out in front of us so we can agree the final design of the roof timbers and ensure they are to his satisfaction for thatching.

I have located the York stone for the old path and that was delivered last week but the new paving from Yorkshire is yet to be confirmed as I want to see it first before making the final decision. My trip to the quarry was abandoned last month because it was under 18 inches of snow. Let’s hope for better conditions next week because this is a major item that I should like to tick off my list.

3000 perennials arrived this week, half in 9cm pots and the other half in boxes, bare rooted field grown plants. Over the next few days they will all be potted into 2 or 3 litre pots and lined out in the poly tunnels.  These in addition to another 2000 perennials which are being grown for us should be sufficient to choose from for the under planting.  I expect that about a third of these should be just right for the middle of May but you never know. There is the chance that each and every one will be perfect or none at all. It is what makes preparing plants for Chelsea so interesting.

After three days without rainfall (an unusual occurrence these days), we have been able to take the opportunity to lift some of the wildflower turf and place it on mats in a poly tunnel to give it a head start. I am not planning a vast array of wildflowers, a simple display of ox eye daisy and field scabious in meadow grasses will provide the required effect but it does have to be nurtured and not too forced to prevent the collapse when we transport it to Chelsea.

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