Adam Frost

Just before I went away to Glastonbury, I was asked to design a small urban edible garden at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Although we didn’t have a lot of time to put this garden together - three weeks all in all - I was pleased with the outcome.

The RHS had linked up with Boris Johnson and Rosie Boycott (chair of London Food) to help promote Capital Growth which has been launched lately. See link for more details: http://www.the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk/news/story.asp?nid=3072

The idea is to create 2012 community growing spaces by 2012. This has got to be a good thing in my book. Anyway, the RHS approached Matt Biggs of Gardeners’ Question Time fame, Chris Myers, a garden designer, and me. We’d like to think it was because we are good at what we do but, to be honest, with only three weeks notice to design and build an edible garden we were probably the only ones mad enough to say yes (we will never know!!)

I think the other two would agree we had some fun though. Matt produced a picking garden that I would probably best describe it as bedding with veg - it looked great. Chris took more of a free spirited approach. To be honest, if you’re a tidy person you probably wouldn’t want him as your neighbour but it did well as expected. And my garden (see below) was designed for a couple who want to combine their passion for cooking with their love of their garden and for them to be able to find something in the garden each day to inspire a meal.

I think the three gardens worked well together and showed how different the same garden space can be. Hopefully it gave people a few ideas to take home and added to a good show.