Infant Joy - just planted

• 4 Jun, 2008
• 11 likes

Okay, this is me showing off. I entered a garden design competition - Avant Gardens at New Hopetoun Nurseries just outside Edinburgh - they build six 4 by 4 metre gardens each year that are supposed to push forward garden design and mine was one of those chosen - inspired by William Blake's illustration of his poem "Infant Joy", the idea is that the gardener is no longer as able as he was, so he spends all his time tending to his Bay Tree, which he tries to keep in an immaculate ball. In the meantime, the plants round about him are running riot and the trellis that used to be so formal is becoming weathered and battered. The plants, when they have grown on a bit, should look like a fire surrounding him - the idea being that they reflect the passion for gardening that burns within him - even now, for although formal topiary is not my style of gardening you have to be passionate to be able to devote yourself to gardening in that way. (The theme for this year is Passion).