TODAY is the first day that the garden designers and their contractors have been allowed to start building at the Three Counties Showground for the Spring Gardening Show.

So Kevin Styles, my contractor and I have been down to there this evening for a look-see. Many teams with big or complicated projects were already hard at work, some with diggers, some with spades and some even with pickaxes. There has been very little rain in the past few weeks and the ground is mighty hard at the moment.

Kevin and I found my plot which had been marked out and the turf scraped off. Touchingly, I thought, the bare earth was also marked with my name! I must say that the plot looked very much smaller in reality than I thought it would. I suppose that when you live with a project for a long time it does take up a big space in your life and in your imagination, and that’s why. I am now starting to wonder whether all the plants I have bought or ordered with actually fit in the garden, even though I have done a careful calculation. However, it is also surprising just how many plants you do need to really fill a garden, instead of leaving space for them to grow as you would normally do.

We also tracked down my stone circle. This, unfortunately, was unlabeled so I had a nice little minor panic thinking that it wasn’t there at first along with everyone else’s order. But with Paul, the showground manger’s help, we did eventually find it, all packed up snug in its crate, ready to be moved onto the garden.

Kevin and I were hoping not to have to hire a digger once the turf had been taken off, but we saw that this is necessary. We want to dig down low enough so as not to have to make a separate hole for every plant, since the planting is so dense. We will remove the plants from their pots and then fill in around them with the soil conditioner provided. Well, that is the master plan. The digger is, however, not available until Thursday, so that will be our Dig Day.

Then, on Friday, Kevin and his team with lay the stone circle and erect the windbreak. We will probably also then plant the bamboos between these too features. This should be quite safe to do far in advance of the show since the local rabbit population is not known to be partial to bamboo. Let's just hope that there are no pandas on the loose in the area!