19 days to go..

8,500 plants have been ordered today from the nursery. They'll be trucked in from various sites depending on how large they are. Huge 4 metre high trees have been grown for us on one site in 1 metre wide bags of soil. We'll need forklifts to shift them into place, so they will go onto the site in the first few days of the build. Kris has worked hard today on our CAD program to work out how many of each we need - it's a rough guide planting plan that will have plenty of artistic interpretation when we get on site. We need something to direct the horticulture students who are helping us though, and to enable the nursery to load the plants in trolleys specifically for the right area of the garden.

One of our advanced Eucalyptus in flower

I feel like we're rehearsing an opera of thousands to be played out on a postage stamp.

Transrock have delivered walling rock to Swinburne today - a beautiful new product called yellow mud stone will form a heart shaped garden bed and a lovely curvy wall in the contemporary garden where the new King in the Garden range of plants will be shown. The Swinburne stone walling students will practise the build of the wall over the next 10 days, sort the rock and pack it onto pallets that make sense to how they will construct it on site. The walls are one of the last things to go in because the students are only in this class once a week, so our construction order is being worked to include them in as much as possible. I'm sure Ben, their teacher, will guide the team like a well oiled machine on the day.

Transrock's yellow mud stone - soon to be drystone wall with attitude

I have a few things to organise tomorrow before spending the day at Swinburne with the entire team. Many of the retaining walls in eucalyptus branch and corrugated iron will be constructed next week, so a review of details is on the agenda. We have some new signage from the sponsors that must be included safely without digging a hole and because sub contractors are involved, we have to pin down the right day for them to come in.

Tomorrow the shed walls will go up, and I'll be able to stand in the structure for the first time. I'll be going over the details of the floral wall with Sandra, our Swinburne floristry teacher. Sandra's group of students will also be helping her construct a pergola across the front of the shed in dried gum nuts and the like - some 12 metres long. Floral exhibits are usually confined to the Exhibition building during the show, so this is something special that we'll have such a cutting edge display in an outdoor garden.

The Yarra Burn winery have supplied our fabulous full size (not full with wine sadly..) wine barrels that form the tables in our cafe. This idea was a family affair, hatched at Robe while catching up with my brother and father one weekend. There was a wine barrel table in the caravan park, and I was nutting out with them how to have a table with a standard grevillea growing up through the middle without it falling over. Dad remembered the wine barrels and so the glass of EB Red Pepper Shiraz was abandoned (criminal really) to go and check them out. The details were finessed somewhat in the course of the evening to hatch what is now a wonderfully quirky growing table that quite a few would like to see in their BBQ areas. Tomorrow I get to see one pretty much finished and that's going to be fun..

Plotting the growing table while the Shiraz breathes...

Have I mentioned the 2 tonne slab of red gum that's being craned in as our bar? Tomorrow perhaps..