42 days to go

In a mere 42 days 'imagine' will stand in 600 square metres of previously inocuous lawn in Carlton Gardens, Melbourne. MIFGS, as we fondly call our once a year flower and garden spectacular, is on again. This year I am lining up for a mammoth effort with a cast of thousands, truckloads of reclaimed tin, tortured eucalypt branches and thousands of gorgeous australian native plants woven into every corner of the design. This blog is the story of a dream as it unfolds in its final preparation phase, into the build phase and finally, the drama of the awards.... will it be good enough?


4 years of garden show experience has given me a healthy fear of disorganisation, a respect for risk management, a love of excel spreadsheets and a resourcefullness that allows me to sniff out a material with character from kilometres away. I like to tell a story with a show garden - I think a garden needs to connect to people who visit in a personal way, so I wanted to find materials to work with this year that celebrate Australia and our rural heritage. My fondness for wide open spaces and the simplicity of a childhood in the country was the seed for this collection of gardens inviting exploration from all. This year our garden is yours to wander through, pause in, learn in and take home. 'Imagine' is for everyone...



So, where are we up to?





Meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings and more meetings. Spreadsheets follow a close second, and this week we may actually see some hammer and nail action with the beginnings of our massive 9 x 12 metre shed starting to be framed up. Swinburne University Wantirna campus in Melbourne are the generous and creative bods making all the pre-fabricated sections of the garden. This week the building students are poring over the engineer's drawings, trying to wrap their creative minds around the difficult structural requirements of the show. There are no holes, no pegs, no star pickets or concrete used to create this garden as we are committed to protecting the beautiful gardens that are heritage listed. So, the floor of this shed is like a miniature stud wall, braced and braced some more just in case we have the gale force mini hurricane that ripped through the site during last year's show.



The old corrugated tin was the starting point for the shed - I just love the range of colours and find myself wondering how many winds strained metal on metal while it stood as a shed on the nursery property. It will be our fresco wall, a painting in itself of hard work, purposeful practicality and perhaps, hope. Our posts are fallen eucalypt trees patterned with lichen and insect trails, bending at just the right places to snuggle a beam or brace an angle. Everything needs to be aged to fit in; the floor a rhythmic patternation of discarded fence palings, the bar a mammoth redgum that fell and was lovingly split to just be. Precious parts of Australia come together to foil a carpet of greenery ready to take on climate change.... We begin a massive task in so many ways.