The SPANA Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show

It’s sometimes a bit depressing for us mere mortals when confronted with real experts.

So it was when award-winning garden designer Chris O’Donoghue and international gardening writer Helen Yemm came out with me to Marrakech last week.

You may have read in SPANA News that we were lucky enough to ‘win’ the opportunity of creating and building a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in May this year.
I have to admit, that it was largely through Chris’s expertise and previous success at the show, that we were able to convince the organisers to take a gamble and let us have a go.

It will be based on the idea that animals, plants and humans are all interdependent –so we’re building a Moroccan courtyard garden, complete with fountain, stable, donkey cart, pots of nice smelly herbs, vines, etc etc. Of course it’s all a bit of a fiction – most Moroccan courtyards or riadhs have been bought up by trendy Islington types and turned into chi-chi little hotels or second homes.

But the idea is right, and I thought it would be fun to do. That is until the dread day draws near, and we are actually expected to put together a smart, professional garden, with more than a little of the ‘wow!’ factor.

Absolutely terrifying.

Hence the visit to Marrakech with Chris and Helen checking things out, and Hamid (our director in Morocco, who also fancies himself as a bit of a gardener) and I staring gormlessly at them as they argued about the ‘architectural structure’ and ‘intrinsic purity and vibrance of colour’ of this or that particular plant.
Of course it also gave us the chance to organise a fountain, donkey cart and harness, old window-frames, pots and tiles etc – so fingers crossed, with a bit of luck, and the afore-mentioned expert help we’ll have a garden to attract potential SPANA supporters.

Oh, I nearly forgot. We’re also having a live donkey – after all it is SPANA.
And the Queen visits on the first day. So, if you read the headlines the following day : ‘DONKEY BITES QUEEN – CHIEF EXEC THROWN INTO TOWER OF LONDON’ - have a bit of sympathy – come and throw me a stale crust of bread now and again.

Jeremy Hulme