Helen's garden design at the NEC

When we heard that Helen was one of four winners of the RHS/BBC Gardeners' World competition to design a small garden, we booked the weekend at the NEC in Birmingham to see her creation. Fortunately, there is a Ryanair flight from Montpellier (about 45 minutes drive from us) to Birmingham, so it wasn't a difficult journey.

We arrived late on Friday and took the sky train from the airport to the railway station, from where we could walk along the sky walk through the NEC to our hotel. We were amazed at the size of the whole complex and how well the interchanges worked.

The next day, Saturday, we were not expecting Helen and Nick to arrive until the early afternoon, so we strolled around the exhibition, located Helen's garden where people were stopping to look and we overheard lots of good comments.




When the rain started,we dashed into the floral pavilion where there were some splendid displays as well as plants to buy.
















When Helen arrived, she tidied up the garden a little, and then we went into Birmingham so that she and Nick could book into their hotel.












Here is the garden and Helen:






The competition was to design a small garden using certain components that were supplied. No theme was provided, but competitors had to write a specification that a client might have given to the designer. This was Helen's first garden design and she was thrilled to have won an RHS bronze medal at the first attempt.




The other three winners of the completion, Angie, Brett and Graham had all designed gardens before and some were professional.







These are some of the raw materials provided.



Having found the hotel and a late lunch we went to the Bullring shopping centre searching for baby transport systems to look at, and then went on to a prearranged dinner.

On Sunday, we found that an invasion had taken place in our hotel





It seemed friendly, so we went back to the NEC and looked round the Gardeners' World exhibition and the Good Food show until Helen arrived. The weather was not good, so we were diving for cover from time to time.

At 4.30, the show was over and flowers and plants from the marquee and gardens were available for sale and visitors were looking for bargains.

This is one of the last photos of the garden - the only one with a bit of sun.




Today, Monday, Helen was to return the lounger to John Lewis and then pack up her strawberry and broad beans to take back to her garden in London. We are on our way home curtesy of Ryanair.

On Saturday, we will be back on Ryanair on our way to Stockholm.


Pat and John on tour