So the day is here - my annual garden Open Day for my garden design students. This is the day when you have to practise what you preach!! Have I overdone the focal points? Is there a sense of simplicity and unity? Is that foliage combination going to work? Will they feel that there is 'genius locii' at work?

I can only wait and see. The weather has not been that great - a good warm spell in May but then cooler and less sunny and that has meant quite a lot of flowers have been delayed this year. As I open my garden on the same weekend each year, it can be easily seen what seasonal differences there are from year to year and this year, flowers are late - Agapanthus still in bud and yet they were in full flower last year.

It was damp and windy yesterday which was not too good for tidying the garden up but it is drying out at present (09.15) but still a bit windy - the sun is out and the sky is getting bluer and I hope the wind will soon drop so that we have a perfect 'garden visiting' afternoon.

All is ready - plenty of tea, coffee, fruit juice and biscuits in the cupboards.

Let mayhem commence!! 

What a varied life indeed!

Spent the morning interviewing prospective garden design degree students and the afternoon marking final year degree student dissertations - some interesting subjects covered.

Tomorrow I am out for the day with the final year students and RosieY (another TGN member) for a visit to Upton Grey - a restored Jekyll garden, a pub lunch and then a specialist plant nursery where I know I won't be able to resist a couple of gems for my own garden.

Saturday sees us at the Garden Show at Stansted Park, Havant - see Events, and Sunday will be spent at the Winchester Farmer's Market followed by drinks and nibbles at a contemporary art gallery private view followed by Sunday lunch in a super old pub! Then it will be back onto the drawing board to colour render the master plan for Black Farm - photos shortly on my profile.

Three weeks of teaching term left now - masses of marking to do and the students are panicking about their exams but then its only another three week until we are off to Italy for Part III of our re-creation of an 18th century 'Grand Tour' - this year we are off to Milan and the Italian lakes and mountains with plenty of side visits to gardens - can't wait!!

That's the great thing about running a garden design business and teaching garden design - every day is different and there certainly isn't a dull moment!!

A very busy day on the drawing board today inking up the Black Farm master plan. All has gone according to plan and I will be off to the print shop tomorrow or Tuesday to get the copies done so that I can then complete a coloured version for the clients in graphic marker work. Will also be able to photograph the coloured version and post it in a new album along with some existing site photographs I took yesterday - then it will all be up to the planners! Could be a wait of 6 - 8 weeks before we know whether we can proceed further with the detailed plans or whether we will have to accomodate their amendments?

A quick turn around on this project which has been completed to this stage in just eight days.

A very successful site visit this morning - the clients are delighted with the layout I had produced for the new gardens and I have got the go-ahead to produce the Master concept plan in colour to go off to the Planning Authority for approval in a couple of weeks time. Hopefully we will get the necessary approvals through in about 6 - 8 weeks time and then it will be all go on the drawing board again to scale everything up from the 1:250 concept plan to several 1:100 / 1:50 detailed plans of the layout, hard landscaping, the level changes etc. etc.

Watch out for a new album of photographs of the existing site in due course and the concept plan when I have finished it. 

They say you shouldn't count your chickens before they are hatched - how right they are!

I emailed the clients regarding setting up a meeting to review the draft pencil plan before committing it to ink and wash and mentioned the re-positioned tennis court now protruding into the agricultural land curtilage. The client (he is a property developer in London - big office blocks etc. and knows his legalities backwards) decided not to go for this option and the hassle of gaining permission to turn agricultural land into garden, so suggested we move it by 4 metres into the pastureland slope behind and then by 4 metres towards the rest of the garden - sounds complicated doesn't it without the benefit of a plan to look at!

The upshot of all this movement would be, we take 72 square metres of agricultural land into the garden but also put a different 72 square metres of garden back into being agricultural land - so the whole process is just a swap of land.

The client thinks the planners will go for this more readily and I am inclined to agree - it just means that I will have to get back on the drawing board and re-draw the tennis court (quite a quick process) but will also have to redraw the whole of the walled potager garden four metres further west!! No quick task as the potager is quite a complex design of raised beds, ground level beds and borders, pathways, a pool, a summerhouse and a glasshouse with cold frames - thank goodness for tracing paper although if I had persevered in learning Vectoworks, it might only take a few minutes!.

That's clients for you - always changing their minds! Just as well it has just started raining heavily - I will leave my labours in my own garden and get back to labouring to solve the problems in someone else's garden.

Watch this space for more progress reports..................................

Attempted to do some work in the garden today - weeding out the Equisetum (the pain of my front garden!) and clipping the cloud trees I have created from seedling Goat Willows over the past seven years. The heavens opened and I will have to leave the former until another day but I did manage to finish the cloud trees - they are looking great.

So, back to the drawing board and a very productive day it turned out to be as I have now finished the first draft of the master plan for Black Farm.

The tennis court is re-sited, the walled garden designed, the main terraced lawns with elliptical retaining walls are all configured, the beds and borders around the house, the new extension and the new barn complex are all complete. Have managed to work into the design all that the clients requested including the pergola walk (they must have a Wisteria to remind them of the one they left behind in the Triggs garden at Sparsholt), the side lawns, a dining out area and a herb parterre. Have also looked at the future planting of 15 - 20 native trees in the water meadow pastures and have located and planned the 36 tree orchard up one of the pastureland slopes - haven't forgotten either, the Whitebeam avenue as requested through the meadow where the public right of way bridlepath runs. Hope the Conservation Officer likes my pergola next to the extended house - have kept it simple and in Oak as the extension will be so he should be happy!

Only slight problem to be discussed with the clients and the planners is the repositioning of the tennis court which now extends over the 'curtilage' line by 2.5 metres - this small area is at present agricultural land and we will need planning permission for this area to be taken into the cultivated 'garden'.

So, next we need another site meeting to discuss my proposals and then hopefully it will be back on the drawing board to create the final ink and wash master plan to go off to the City Council for planning consents.

Watch this space and be patient because the master plan will eventually appear!

Making a start today on the master plan for Black Farm - a bit 'sad' really to be at the drawing board and the computer on a Bank Holiday Monday but it's lashing down with rain outside and it's also very windy so there is no point in going out even into my own garden to do some snipping and pruning!

Have so far traced off the boundaries, existing trees and vegetation as well as the existing house and the proposed extension and am starting to sketch out the new garden areas - the new terrace, the terraced lawns, the re-orientated tennis court and the new walled garden complex. The sight and vista lines are coming along well to link the various areas together and to provide pleasant 'perambulations' and I am having very positive feelings as to how the design is going to meld the site together.

Feeling very positive about this design - it should work well.

More later! 

The site visit to Black Farm (its original name) has been and gone today - about three hours on site with the clients.

Interesting house - not Tudor as I first thought but rather Queen Anne in period and not really a house - more of an old farmworker's cottage with Georgian and Victorian additions. Its on an estate once owned by Percy Bysshe Shelley's brother and is in a truly beautiful setting of water meadows, gently sloping pastures and small wooded copses - about three hectares in total with some land rented out for grazing.

Currently the house is pretty stripped back to its bones - lots of plasterless walls, exposed floor joists and rafters with the woodworm treatment done a couple of days ago, no roof at present but undergoing a lot of underpinning and brickwork repair. My clients have PP for a new extension on the back which the Conservation Officer wants to be different in style rather than a pastiche of Queen Anne style, so it's going to be of local handmade brick and timber cladding over an oak frame as are the replacements barns for workshop, playroom, storage and garaging.

As to the gardens - there isn't much at present but there is a lot of scope - a tennis court to be relocated, a walled garden (potager style) to be built with local brick with tiled copings and flint panels, two new terraced lawns up one of the slopes, a completely new terrace of york stone to wrap around two sides of the house and the new extension, an oak pergola, a new haha at the boundary with the pastureland so we can take the fences down, a new Whitebeam avenue along the driveway and plenty of native tree planting in the copses and pastures to create a small landscape park. It was a pretty busy three hours discussing the various options and the sequencing of the works over the coming 18 -24 months and so it's all pretty much worked out - all I need to do now is create the master plan!!

So, next week - onto the drawing board to create an A0 sized drawing of the whole site at 1.250 to be sent off with the planning application for the relocated tennis court, the walling for the new walled garden, the haha wall and the pergola that is close to the house - Grade II listed so any structure nearby needs Listed Building planning consent.

It's going to be a busy week!! More news later and perhaps I will post some photos and the master plan in due course.

Quite a busy teaching week with the degree students nearing the end of their semester and am now getting ready for their exams and final hand in of design projects. Lots of work ahead in the next six weeks with all this marking to do and all the dissertations to read - just as well I only have two projects on the drawing board at present.

Ooops, my relaxed air is suddenly disrupted as an email arrives out of the blue!

A past client has sold their Arts and Crafts manor house (the one with the restored sunken garden in my photo album) and have bought a Tudor Manor house in the water meadows near Winchester. Grade II listed and planning consents needed for all the alterations, renovations and new extensions etc and of course they need a master landscape plan prepared like yesterday - no small feat as the grounds run to about three hectares! Later receive a pdf file from the surveyors of the overall site plan and then off to the printers tomorrow for multiple copies. First site meeting on Saturday and then onto the drawing board to attempt to fulfill their brief, finalise the masterplan, draw it up, print multiple copies and send it off to the City Council with the client's planning application - all by Monday 2nd June! So here goes....... watch this space for further news - I am sure there will be a knot garden in there somewhere!