Flesh and bones…

And so we continued – further comments were made on further sketches, and gradually, the bones began to form into the final skeleton of a design. Alex, Jim and I were happy that the space would tell the story we had constructed and that the elements were clear.

But then the bones needed fleshing out. This was a whole new conversation, and was destined to become another lengthy affair.

Yet again, Alex and I congregated at his studio, complete with cakes and tea. Each of us had already made a list of the sort of planting we thought would work, and we set about combining the lists and striking off the no-goers.

A couple of hours later the list was combined and (a little) shorter than when we had started. A conference call to Jim and a few more plants were added. Not many were struck off.

But, a clean and modern design (which is what the space had grown into) needed a clean and cohesive planting list. Long ramblings were not going to cut it, so a ruthless cull was required.

Cupcakes and concepts…

The three way design team is split geographically between the glorious counties of Gloucestershire, East and West Sussex. Fortunately, two of us (as you can see) live very close to one another, so it was decided that Alex and I begin the design work together, getting a concept sorted before running it past the other eyes of the team.

So scribbles in hand, I drove over the Alex’s on yet another grey day in winter to have our first design meeting.

As I was brought up good and proper I will not lie. I was very worried that we would have completely different ideas and the whole exercise would be a nightmare. What if we were coming from different angles? Could we combine our ideas into one design?

Nervously, we both scattered our inky ramblings, sketches and concept images onto the kitchen table, amongst the tea and chocolate cupcakes.

We had very similar ideas. Patterns were from the same pot if not exactly the same, so we overscribbled our scribbles and decided to each solidify our designs and bring them together using the wonders of Computer Aided Design.

The design had begun…