NOTES BY KATE FREY:
Day 1
As bare as a theater stage, the sites disheveled, sparse grass backed by the glaring, white plastic marquee challenge the imagination and bodies assembled here to transform its bare flatness into a real winery and vineyard that breathes with vitality 8000 miles away. A team of seven people and one digger are ready to begin.
Day 2
A redwood, and very rustic barn/winery, windmill and hillside with grapes backed by a redwood grape stick fence now exist as real elements of London surrounded by teeming cities of masonry construction in the other gardens. The barn and windmill arrived in flat pieces on a truck and were assembled in the course of the day with the help of a crane, and soil excavated from other gardens serves as a hill for the grapes for the winery.
Day 3
The garden continues to evolve despite the bricks, pottery shards, bits of glass and rubble that, like an archeological site, give hints of life between recently and long ago and are so compacted into the soil that they appear as geological strata created over the millennia. Planting continues of rugged grapes and hedgerow boxes with the aid of the digger that also is very helpful for the contouring of the pond.
Day 4
In the space of four days the Wild West has come to Chelsea. The site has assumed its finished contours, from the structures, to the elevations and major plants. Its western rusticity is apparent from the moment the windmill is glimpsed from the end of Main Avenue, generating the urge to run down to the site to see a picture that is astonishingly at odds with the classical and modern brick and stone dominated gardens that form the major atmosphere of the show gardens.
Day 5
The rain the day before awakened the moss and lichen covering the old redwood the barn is made from. Rosemary and the climbing rose ‘Crimson Conquest’ serve to tie the structures and olive and grape covered hillside together. Reddish rocks now delineate the seating area in front of the winery, and have been used to build a small retaining wall to hold the hillside back. The pond is roughed in and now has its rubber lining. The bridge is hovering in place over the pond waiting for plants and water.
Day 6
The wildflowers arrived about 10, about 4000 of them on 20 metal trolleys. They line the track way next to our garden in a long line like gorgeous spectators in their boxes at the opera. They are in shades of yellow, gold, white, deep gentian blue, orange and red, and are Goldfields, Poached Egg Flower, Desert Bluebells, California Poppies and Crimson Clover. Looking at the area they occupy, it is hard to imagine we will be able to fit them all in the garden. However, we have thought the same thing each Chelsea and ended up using them all. The first patches going in are already exercising their magic.
Day 7
The bare ground is beginning to flow with wildflowers. We work in individual areas from the back of the garden to the front in a common theme, with the effect that pools of delicate wildflowers flow in broad streams from the back of the garden to the front under the grape vines and spill over the rock wall. The individual species are combined to blend together in a seamless tapestry of yellow, white, gold, blue with a few touches of red. The main theme uses the Poached Egg Flower, Goldfields, California Poppies with touches of Desert Bluebells for an accent. Briza, or Quaking Grass is mixed in for a naturalistic effect. Through this colorful carpet run the remnants of an old barley field with Crimson Clover and Corn Chamomile woven in. It all looks very natural, but takes quite a bit of concentration to achieve.
Day 8
We are waiting for another plant delivery from British Wildflowers to finish the bank of wildflowers under the grapes. Cow Parsley, digitalis, and Ragged Robin are needed against the hedgerow to tie the bulk of the fence and hedge row to the lower wildflowers in front, and soften the transition. The lush carpet of color in front of the garden appears doubly saturated against the stripes of wet, unplanted black earth- a contrast of vitality and bleakness, that the colors in our garden seem to rage against. We finished the front of the garden today instead, where the California wildflower carpet comes down to meet the overflow from the water barrel at the base of the windmill, a low, boggy stream that will be filled with wetland plants, that arrive Wednesday.
Day 9
The plant delivery arrived and Adrian and Mark disappeared into the far reaches of the wildflowers to work from the back to the front and finish the bank. The rest of us began to plant the front, left side of the garden around the pond with a mixture of meadow grasses, meadow weeds and flowers and flowers for our flowering habitat border. The edges of this area are supposed to be reflective of a dryer, more infertile soil, and the areas around the pond are wetter. Meadow Foxtail, dock, Meadow Clary and Marsh Valerian indicate the wetter aspect and Creeping Bent, Sheep fescue and Wild Clary, the drier. Mixed in with these species are the flowering habitat border species, Trifoliums, Dill, Ammi Majus, Campanula, thistles, salvias and others.
Day 10
It looks as if we are almost finished. The main part of the pond and habitat border are done, waiting for the aquatic and bog plants to finish, the wildflowers under the grapes are mostly planted, the only bare area is the stream from the barrel to the aquatic area. Yet the status of almost is deceiving. There are the roses yet to go in on the windmill and barn, and the areas around them to finalize with the wildflowers. There are lots of details yet around the pond, the rock wall to plant, the whole seating area to put in, and then plant and the floor of the barn to be done. Still, it is a wonderful riot of color and vitality to see it now.
