Shepard hut build

After a couple of false starts with the hut regarding the weather , wind and rain ! Then mum and dad suggested coming over on Sunday to help build it and have tea , yes please !! The weather was hot and sunny and it was lovely spending the afternoon with some of my favorite people . It took a bit of getting sorted but once we got going it went up well , it needed modifying a bit to make it fit and by the end of the day it looked perfect , like it had always been in the garden . The steps Brian and I made the other day worked really well too . We finished the day off with a curry made by Cam and a suntan ! 

Shepard hut and friends

Part two of Shepard hut build  commenced with friends over for BBQ and hut building . You know those day when in your mind it will be easy and something will get done , but the reality is that it's always much harder than you first thought . The boys - Brian , Jez , And Mick did really well building a framework for the hut to sit on , then it was time for chilling with a beer or two and some yummy food ( Brian is an awesome cook ) a good time was had by all. The next day Brian put the boards on ready for the hut to go on . 

Shepard hut and sunshine

This story begins 18 months ago , after farming a council farm for 23 years it was time for dad to give up the farm , well you can imagine the accumulation over that time, sheds with all sorts in! (My kind of heaven ) dad had asked if I wanted to have a look around and see if I wanted anything . There was an old paddock behind the main shed and we were having a look about , when I clapped eyes on an old trailer base and my mind started turning ideas over , and I knew in a second it would make a perfect Shepard hut base . This started the idea for my last show garden The Artisans retreat garden . 

You see Brian and I are far to lazy to just make something for the fun of it  , I loved the idea of having a Shepard hut but A they are very expensive and B it would take an awful lot of work , so in that moment I realized that building the hut for the show garden to fit on the trailer base afterwards , I would get a great show garden done and have something beautiful at the end of it . Well it definitely worked in the show garden and We won best in show for our effort . But there it lay stacked in a pile when we got home . Then about a month ago we decided to get to work putting it in our garden . First job was to pull out a dead tree trunk and metal structure we had experimented with but it didn't work out . Dads with tractors are very helpful ! 

At Chelsea to see how it's done

Today Brian and I have been to Chelsea on a site visit to see how a Chelsea building site looks . It was brilliant seeing the gardens being built , all at different stages of completion , diggers and dumper trucks , people busy planting teams of ten or more working on gardens  .  Cleve west and Matthew Childs spoke to us and  gave us advice . The gardens are looking great and really coming together. I'm really getting excited about when it's our turn to begin our build at Hampton court in six weeks time!

Oil drum jigsaw

Over the weekend I thought I better get some metal cutting done. I am so grateful that I get to build show gardens and I know that I don't approach creating a show garden in the same way that other designers do . I'm guessing the normal way is if you want a woven willow fence you find a crafts person who weaves willow to create one for you , I want a willow fence and I learn to do it myself, because learning new skills and crafts make me happy, so far over the past 3 years Brian and I have learned to weave willow(he was better at it than me) , hazel arches, build a pond , create bespoke water features , work with wood , build a Shepard hut from onion boxes (hard but worth it) (it will get rebuilt in our garden ) ,create stained glass windows, and my latest skill metal cutting with a plasma cutter has to be my favorite , I could literally do it all day long , oh hang on I did -today ! And I loved every second of it . First I measured and cut the oil barrels to fit , I decided that plenty of metal is precision cut and the beauty of plasma cutting is the curves you can achieve. So I cut the parts where the drums overlap straight and the parts you see in wavy lines, they will partly be covered by the plants overhanging . Once I had cut all the drums in half , I started drawing the designs on them , I'm going for a botanical illustration feel I started with clover and then did a dark blue one with salad burnet and lastly one based on birds foot trefoil . By this time it was 7pm and raining hard. a lovely lady walking her dog boris asked if she could take shelter in the barn and we had a nice chat , it turns out she's a keen gardener and has open her garden many times with the ngs and is going to Hampton court this year ! After she left I decided to call it a day and went in for tea , only then did I notice that my face was filthy from the plasma cutting ! Haha what  must she have thought . 

Getting into the flow

It's Friday and dad was coming over to help us finish putting up our Shepard hut , but as he turned up we decided it was far too windy so we started chatting about the water feature for the show garden, we got the tank out we are using and removed the ballcock and some timber that was attached , then we went to have a look at dads yard which is always a gold mine for one of my projects. I noticed a really cool looking conveyor that no longer works and was destined for the scrapyard, last year I used the belt from it which had turned a really great streaky turquoise colour. Now I was noticing the orange and rust metal frame . Dad said we could use it and set about it with a grinder to take it apart . Meanwhile I got to work cleaning the grease off the yellow pavilion supports. Once it was apart we took it into the shed and I realized just what a find it was the body of it is a perfect fit for the water tank and will form the splash back for the water feature . The angle sections are going to be perfect for the stage frame and the wheel  sections will make perfect table legs . Yay I'm so happy with today's progress !!

I'm so glad it was windy after all.