I’m pressing forward tying up all the lose ends for my show garden. The canvas for the windbreak is here now and ready to be cut and shaped to size. The wooden supporting poles are on their way too and all they now need are some decorative caps to finish them off. So progress is being made on this feature!

I revisited a large nursery this week to buy some plants to enhance the frontage of DK Masonry and look at their herbaceous plants and grasses. I was told on my first visit in January that there was really no need to reserve any plants, but many that I wanted have been sold. Also, the majority of herbaceous perennials are outside and still playing dead. Will they have any suitable colour in time for the Show, I ask myself?

At this nursery they also routinely sheer off the flowers of any perennials which are unsold and getting too leggy. Some poor show garden designer last year apparently reserved 100 pots of lovely white anthemis as one of her key plants. But the day before she was due to collect them some diligent nurseryman pruned them all back to the leaf, including hers. The designer was then left high and dry with a few days to judging to find a suitable replacement. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Growing plants commercially in this country is so subject to the vagaries of the weather that its no wonder top designers have to order their plants so far in advance and have them watched over in a polytunnel. They have to guarantee What They Want When They Want It – but all this comes at a price, of course.

Meanwhile, I spent a good part of last weekend putting together some suggestions for my show garden leaflet which, as part of their marketing at the Show, Worcester College of Technology are sponsoring. (In another life, I work their as well!) The College will be putting on a fashion show in the Arts Marquee on the first day of the Spring Gardening Show. Every garden in the Chris Beardshaw mentoring competition will be represented by an outfit inspired by it and designed by the students. I can’t wait to see mine!

I am also very pleased with the look of my leaflet which is enhanced by two lovely conceptual paintings of my garden by Lesley Peachey, who I am very grateful to. She slaved over a hot easel for me at very short notice!

On another subject, are you planning to go to Daffodil Sunday at Madresfield Court? Its such a lovely garden to visit, especially if the weather is clement next weekend. I can remember visiting it even as a child and being especially impressed by the Victorian Pulhamite rock garden, which is made from artificial rocks on a grand scale, very fashionable at the time. If you like that sort of thing (and I do) the subterranean grottos at Dewstow House in Monmouthshire, also created by Pelham and Sons, are even more wonderful.