Announcing the winners of the Jacksons Show Gardens competition
This week saw the deadline for entries for the design competition and the judging day. After a huge influx of exciting looking packages over the last few weeks these were whittled down to a final 30-ish strong contenders to be judged on the day.
I was even more impressed with the standard of the designs this year, so much hard work and thought had gone in to so many of the designs, and the presentation was amazing. We asked for quite a lot of detail, I thought, but many of the designers went beyond the call of duty.
It makes choosing the winners so difficult when you see the effort that has gone in and it’s not very nice knowing the disappointment those who haven’t been chosen will feel, but at the end of the day, we have to think of the display of the show gardens as a whole, not just the three new ones, but the existing gardens that will be revamped this year too, which does help with some of the difficult decisions. If we’ve already got something that, for instance is a “fun” design and will appeal to younger people then it will mean having to eliminate another design that may be absolutely wonderful, but may be a bit too similar. So we’ve used this as our criteria, learnt last year and it does help a bit.
The thirty designs on the table were eventually whittled down to five that we all thought were very strong and after some heart wrenching and agonising the final choice for the three new show gardens were:
Garden 1, The Fragrant Front Garden by Justine Jobson
– this was one of only two designers that thought of a front garden as a theme and deserved to be built for it’s unusual use of Jacksons steel products and it’s ingenuity. Read More about Justine...
Garden 2, Chill out Garden by Helen Elks-Smith
– A space to relax and unwind, which we’ve all heard of before, of course, but it had a great combination of elements, including the wild flower lawn that won over Richard Jackson in particular. Read more about Helen...
Garden 3, The Paradise Garden by Mary Ann Le May
complete with water windows, rill and ripples in the sand! Read more about Mary...
I’d like to give a special mention to the two designers whose designs made it through to the last five, they came very close and definitely deserve a mention:
Christine Sullivan for her Xplorer Garden and Kevin Hosier’s Geometric Garden. Both of these made it very hard for us and they really should be commended for their hard work, creativity and the attention to their presentation which was excellent, thank you both and well done.
Now begins the really hard work of getting the three new show gardens built and not forgetting the revamp of the four existing ones in time for the opening on the 21st May, I’m delighted to say we have Joe Swift celebrity TV gardener confirmed to do the honours again this year, thanks Joe!
Watch this space for more updates...
Louise Tomlin
