Dixter

Trips to Inner Temple, Sissinghurst and Dixter last week. The first two had suffered understandably from the horrid conditions; lack of colour, slow growth.

However, Dixter never fails to amaze me. Full of colour, height and drama. This is such an impressive garden.

Baby stuff

Baby boy Keem looking like tin tin at 20 weeks.

Me at 26 weeks

Me at ? weeks (its all a blur) thinking I was massive, paaaah!

Gardening stuff

My garden early June. All nicely under control here, Alchemilla starting to flower, lush feel but also some colour

My garden July: My lack of gardening early on means the border full of weeds and taken over by the teasels I sowed. Verbena bonariensis is in there somewhere. Next year I will deal with this and add another colour for July perhaps..

A friend's garden: I planted this up last year, the conifers were already there. Top middle is Echinacea 'White Swan' completely devasted by slugs

Same garden. I wanted the planting to be lush and fit with the greens of the conifers but I hadn't accounted for the Ceanothus being bright blue - garrr!

The aftermath: South of France

Phil's beautifully cut hedges

A veggie patch in the South of France

My weeding on the terrace

Terraces in France

2 months have passed since the end of the course and I'm just starting to feel normal again. The first few weeks I had nightmares that I had failed and that I had missed pin up etc.

Here's a few posts with the fun things I've been up to as part of my post traumatic stress therapy program:

A week in France: gardening in the morning, long lunch, pool or beach in the avo. No vino for me this year tho..

Final Exhibition Build

Weird negative feelings this morning driven by the thought that I haven't achieved what I would have liked to and that I could have done better. But I think these came from such a familiarity with the sheets and the scheme and the ability learned from this course of constantly being critical. After pin up, I actually felt quite pleased with what I've achieved, esp. under the circumstances. Maybe you have to learn to let go of your work and give it over to others? Anyway, its out of my hands now...

Revised planting schedule

In the correct format with added bulbs for seasonality

Drainage and other things

Whilst looking through all my work, I've discovered loads of things that I worked on and pinned up but have never been asked for again. So I thought I would tidy these up and pin them behind something. This final final final pin up is a bit of a mystery so far, no one's entirely sure what to put up so if you put it all up, you can't go wrong. Well, aside from the quality that is.. Speaking of which here's a drainage plan.

Mood boards and precedents

Planting

Precedents

Materials

After picking up my A3 document to make suggested changes and finding myself staring constantly out the window wondering if forget-me-nots were weeds, I decided to turn to something more interesting. I've put together some precedent sheets for the final presentation so I can try to build a better picture of what I'm doing, esp regarding the granite walls and planting concepts...

model images

A 2 day migraine has put me back and today I was so wiped out that I couldn't face the a1s so took a different tack and built some images from the 1:200 model. Not sure if we are required to have these but hopefully they strengthen the argument.

Final Crit

Yesterday went really well for me. I swallowed my nerves and presented my work clearly and the judges were actually really positive about lots of things.

As time goes by, I am starting to understand what they mean by the things they drum into us. I think you can get caught in the process and lose the ability to understand what's happening around you, to think objectively for yourself. You act robotically in response to a series of instructions without questioning what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Yesterday showed the process in its entirety and this allows you to analyse why you've made choices and how you got to where you are. Explaining it to outsiders allows you to analyse where you could have done better. Plus seeing the whole lot together reinforces the fact that its about the design and I almost understand now why we are strictly banned from asking about rendering (although I still think its held in greater esteem by the judges than they would like to let on).

My work has gaps but overall the development showed and the sheets looked cohesive on the wall. I wish with hindsight I had been bolder with my ideas and just gone for it, underconfidence early on has made my design a little predictable I think. Plus, my poor knowledge and lack of enthusiasm for the constuction of the granite wall has made what should be the strongest part of my concept a little weak because it is still quite undefined. This has to be an aim for me for the next couple of weeks. Either to get good precedents and/or to build a good model which explores these walls.

1:50 plan, sections and sketches

1200 sections and sketches

Redone 1200 work

I'm struggling with this plan to get the scene across as one of fun and games rather than Eastern block because there is so much grey in the scheme. I've added a couple of garish blue sunbeds to liven it up but the model sells the scheme much better. Lighting plan looks flash, quite pleased with that. The IT man was unimpressed that he had to change the ink just for my drawing, nothing that a bit of charm wouldn't fix though.

Work so far

150 sheets

Husband watching cup final amidst 1/200 sheet chaos

I've really pushed myself this week, I was so behind, I knew it took a massive push to pull things together. I'm really pleased with what I've achieved considering how I felt last week and any negative feedback won't take away how proud I am of myself for the discipline that I've applied over the last few days.

Tuesday and Wednesday were re-read crit comments, adjust and redraw all plans, sections and sketches. This took til Weds avo when I had to scan at school, got stuck in traffic both ways and had to kick an attitudey brat off the scanner

(Grumble: school this week has been really stressy with people oozing attitude and getting all narky waiting for printing and not being able to get computers etc. I got told today that I was on my laptop not the computer so I should get off. Errmm try getting here and queuing in the morning to get into the library instead of strolling in at 3pm.)

Thursday was re-annotating everything. This took way longer than I thought and by 10.30pm I was writing inane drivel so decided to stop.

Friday I had a breakdown and thought there was no way I would finish but somehow I managed to pull it together and render EVERYTHING in 1 day. I thought it would look like a rush job but it looks ok apart from a few glaring errors.

Today printing and planting plan.

Printer broke down twice, I'm best friends now with the IT guy, £30 down but really pleased with the way it looks. The overall look is coherent I think..

Now, models....

Its 9am and it feels like the afternoon

I've been up with the lark every day this week as I can't do late nights and so far I have redrawn the

1:2000

1:200

1:50

9 sections

16 sketches

As well as re-annotating the

1:2000

1:500

1:200

1:50

24 sketches

9 sections

and now I'm rendering in a quick dash to the finish. Here's my finished 1:50.

reworked hand drawn 1/50

Hardworks

I have been avoiding these sheets because I'm more in to the planting so I pushed myself to do these today. Technical drawing session tomorrow too which relies on these details (numbers, measuring and precision drawing, this is going to hurt)

Hooray I've finished something!

Finished model with context and newly extended to fit the whole A1

Improving the 1:200 model

Got rid of the dishcloth trees and added some planting.  Compartments coming together now.

reworked 1:200

Some changes to the compartments, added a mixed hedge, changed the shadows to come from the south west, removed ugly hedge and replace with wall

Worst ever crit

A brillo pad floating in dirty dish water

Worst ever crit yesterday.  Spent Easter trying to come up with some kind of style.  Had no clear resolution on whether we could hand draw the 1:50 plan so was forced to photoshop this (good experience anyway) and it was compared to a 'brillo pad in a bowl of dirty washing up liquid'.  My work was incomplete for the second crit in a row as I take 1 step forward and 3 back.

I used to work for a billion dollar hedge fund and I left this company because the ethics practiced by the management were that of aggression and negativity.  Regular snide jokes, humiliation and bullying led to a loss of confidence and a feeling of worthlessness.  Favourites and whingers were given more support than non-fussmaking hard workers who were strong team players; the worker bees, but were never given any credit for what they did.  Work/life balance was seen as a weakness with those who were unable to manage their work loads and working rediculous hours praised and glorified for being commited.  The office atmosphere always tense with no 'good mornings' or 'how are you's', this being defined as weak insignifigant small talk, another method of management control to show how important they are compared to the minions.

I left that industry vowing to work for myself and in search of an industry where people were nice to each other, supported each other and where I could regain my confidence. I thought garden design would be different but maybe have I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire?

3 more sketches