Garden Makeover: Diary Of A Garden Makeover | 4Homes

Garden Designs & Ideas Diary Of A Garden Makeover

4. The Phone Call

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4. The Phone Call (Image 4 of 10)

The telephone rang. It was Simon Pyle, Vice Principal of the English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Garden. He said that, a little like the messages in Mission Impossible, that our challenge, should we wish to accept it, was to do up the garden/grounds/park (well, some of it) and restore it to an elegant and important landscape befitting the best preserved Norman keep in northern Europe. Red House Television for Channel 4 would be coming to lunch in a few days time to look at it; the advice was to look at a gardening book.

We laughed at each other over supper. Although I am an architect and can design, I know nothing beyond lawn, daffodil and poppy as far as plants go, and Jason is much more interested in deconstruction in the form of bonfires than restoration. It's okay, they aren’t going to pick us, but, hey, they might have need for a Norman or Georgian location one day so it's worth cooking a good lunch.

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