Failure...

Community gardens and other shared green spaces are often a bit rubbish. Or nice for a community garden, which is different to just being nice.

And we wanted to change that. Because there's no reason a public space can't actually look marvellous. They don't have to be all bedding plants, rose beds and Cotoneaster. But depressingly often, they are.

It's best to avoid any plants that really need mollycoddling (like bedding plants and roses...), but there are a huge number of things that will look amazing in a garden, even if it's there in the middle of a town to be used by everyone. And it might get vandalised, but it might not, and even if it does, probably not much. The general public don't really do all that much vandalising really; I've never kicked a Cotoneaster to bits, have you?

There really are no reasons our shared green spaces can't look brilliant. But usually, they don't.

We created the garden to change that. We wanted to create a show garden that could be a real garden, and could demonstrate that a community space can look great, just as good as a private garden.

And our show garden looks pretty. Look!



But it's hard to say we've succeeded, isn't it?

It's not that we needed to get a medal, we just needed to not not get a medal. We could have, I guess, just done a display garden, like the tropical beach garden next to us, that Ryan loved posing with.

And we didn't have to get any particular medal. And our garden didn't have to be better than the other gardens. It didn't have to look the same as the other gardens. It just had to hold its own.

But, by doing a garden that was in for a medal, and not getting one, it's very hard to argue that it was just as good. How do you demonstrate that a community garden created by volunteers can be just as great as any other type, when the non-community gardens all got medals and this one didn't?

Our garden did look pretty.

And it had lots of evergreens, plants with seedheads and trees with interesting bark, so would continue to look pretty in all seasons. And it attracted lots of wildlife. And it was a garden that really could be created by a team of volunteers at a community garden anywhere in the country. The plants are ones that are easy to propagate, so can be grown by volunteers, like lots of ours were, to keep the cost down, and get more people involved. And it was low in hard landscaping, to again keep the cost down, and make it possible to recreate by volunteers who may not necessarily have any specialist building skills.

But even though it looks lovely, and really would work as a real garden, it's very hard to use the garden to inspire people to volunteer improving their own area, when it has a great big letter stuck to the sign next to it saying it's too rubbish to get a medal.

So it's pretty, but a bit of a failure, really.

We don't yet know why it didn't get a medal. We're due some feedback from the judges at some point. Other people from the RHS told us before the show that we shouldn't worry because they'd let us know if they thought we weren't going to medal, so we had time to sort it out before the judges came round. But they didn't say anything to us, because they thought we'd be fine. So we've not got any ideas at all yet, apart from our own. If you have any ideas, feel free to share; I think you can comment on this post anonymously if necessary...