The finished Headway Shropshire show garden
I am absolutely delighted to report that our garden WON at Shrewsbury Flower Show on Friday 13 August. Having worked on it until really late on Thursday evening, we were back on site for 7am to do the finishing touches. Mike was happy with the rainfall over night – the garden looked mature and glistened from a fresh shower.
TV gardener Chris Beardshaw was one of the judges and he came over for a preliminary look at the garden at around 8.15am. We then waited and waited for the judges to come back and judge the garden properly. I had to go off and ‘look after’ the Hairy Bikers so was relying on Rachel to keep me posted. I had just been tipped off that the BBC were on their way over to interview Mike, so I gave Rachel a call – the BBC were already there, and apparently we had just been judged. It could only have been a couple of minutes later when she rang to say we had won!! I was with Lanyon Bowdler‘s managing partner David Battisby at the time, and so we both whooped with joy!
Not only had we won, but we received a Gold Certificate – fantastic, and a tribute to all those who have been involved in this wonderful journey. Chief Executive of Headway Shropshire, Jean Robinson, was present on Friday, of course she was thrilled. We had clients from the centre there too – it continued to be a great team effort over Friday and Saturday as the number of visitors to the garden were high.
A close up of the water feature
Mike has received plenty of enquiries – the quality of the work clearly evident. His team – including son Christy Russell, Chris Bromley & Marty Salisbury were brilliant – spending hours and hours putting it all together (and sadly today, taking it apart).
We aren’t quite finished yet, more photos and some thank you’s will follow tomorrow or Tuesday. It has been a great, but extremely tiring weekend!!!
Some of the team in the garden
