Have you noticed that everything’s a journey these days especially on the tellybox, everybody’s at it from butchers, bakers and garden makers

Well my lovely reader, not being one to shy away from the trend I too have been on a journey, both a personal one and a professional one. However as this is not “The Only Way is Gardening” you’ll be pleased to know that there will be no extended periods of navel gazing just lots of pictures of plants and gardens. Mostly mine in this post, but then again this is my blog so I think its allowed. There will be a more balanced approach in further posts I promise.

As some of you may know I was one of five designers from England chosen to have a design in The International Residential Garden Show held in the grounds of Huisten Bosh Nagasaki home of The Gardening World Cup.

There were lots of times during this trip I wish I’d had my camera to hand, not least the journey from the airport to my hotel. Traveling through the streets of Nagasaki by bus gives you an excellent view into gardens, which for a nosey Garden Designer was a treat. Lots of allotment style gardens with black loamy soil growing some plants I recognised and others which although I have grown before such as Colocasia or Elephants Ears I had never though of as edible (further research has lead me to believe they are) and lots of cloud pruning.

Further out of Nagasaki the landscape changed to take in fewer houses and more fields. Now being from a farming county fields are a common sight in Herefordshire, these however were paddy fields of a most glorious acid green and not surrounded by hedges but swathes of crimson Lycoris radiata also known as the hurricane lily. The sides of the hills were terraced with more paddy fields cutting onto forests populated by huge bamboos… stunning.

So far, so verbose, so it must be time for some pictures.

Nothing prepares you for Huis Ten Bosh, the scale of the place is epic as is the legendary piped music. You walk past the train station and over the bridge and bam, goodbye Japan

and hello Holland. It’s not often my journey to work takes me past windmills and canals.

And so to the grounds surrounding a replica dutch palace where my garden was starting to take shape….

…..and working with the ever cheerful Mr Ichinose and the ever resourceful Mr Masaki together we turned and empty plot into a little slice of England.

The irony of recreating a traditional British cottage garden in a replica Dutch town in Japan was not lost on me lovely reader.

We had everything you could need in this type of garden…..

……including naughty invisible chickens laying eggs in random places……

…..borders stuffed to the gunnels with a feast for the eyes, nose and stomach…….

…..so stuffed in fact the garden overflowed under the fence……

…..but in all the hustle and bustle of jostling plants my favourite spot…..

….somewhere quiet to take time out, and reflect on the garden and its visitors…..

Hide and seek seemed a popular game amongst the four and two legged visitors to the garden and I’ll leave you with perhaps my favourite picture, a little boy playing in the garden with his Mum.