Professor Caroline Evans from Central St Martins brought a whole new angle to the party. She enjoys pursuing gardens – catching up with them as they change. Like the Pursuit of Happiness I suppose. She presented us with Plant-free Garden equivalents from her world. Apparently one fashion collection had no clothes – nothing.
On an equally surreal note Stephen wondered if it were possible to make a garden by wrapping the whole of the RHS Council and leaving the resulting bundle outside.

First up is Wayne Hemingway http://www.hemingwaydesign.co.uk/. What a star. Why isn’t he better listened to? If local authorities and the government gave his housing scheme designs the attention they deserve we’d have a happier little island and far less crime and grimness. His methods are proven and, frankly, you don’t need to be a social scientist to work out why. His schemes give people lovely places to live with outside space where action and community spirit thrive alongside the plants and trees. It’s a no brainer given to us by someone with burgeoning grey matter and conviction.    

GOLD
The win, and raising awareness about problems faced by the indigenous people of the Cameroon rainforest, made the slog worth it… even working seven months without a weekend. You can read about some of it on http://bakagarden.wordpress.com/.
And as soon as I get a break from my new job, running the Financial Times’ property section, I’ll put some pix up.    

Was the evening becoming tired and emotional when OE artist/ceramicist Jonathan Garratt www.jonathangarratt.com suggested planting up either side of airport runways to make ‘accelerated gardens’? These are gardens designed to be viewed at twenty miles an hour or whatever it takes for a Ryanair jet to crawl into the sky.

Now I am shattered. First day of the Chelsea Gardening Matters forum. It started three years ago and I’ve chaired every year. This year the Royal Horticultural Society’s Bob Sweet has put two of us in per day to chair it. Today I am with Wesley Kerr.

The first time we met was in 2004 when I was presenting BBC2’s Gardens Through Time. We were filming at Chelsea. My director had told me to walk and talk in one direction, his director had told him to walk and talk in….a collision course. Neither of us saw the other coming and BANG we crashed.
This time we find a more collaborative way to work one on stage and the other cheer leading from the floor.

I’ll be talking about Erotic Gardens on Friday February 5th at Middle Temple (all proceeds to Malawi Dream, tickets from malawi_dream@me.com) and March 12 and 19 in Oxford. The Oxford gigs are also fund raisers, one for a new homeless charity working with the Burford Garden Company. Probably easiest to buy tickets from me. Watch this space for updates about the charities etc!
    

Andrew Fisher Tomlin, who helped pull this debate together, has been hired by the RHS to tutor the Shows Department in design speak. Good thinking. Cuts down misunderstandings. Maybe this new urge to communicate properly will avoid future appearances of dreary plots like the Plastercine garden.    

Run away to the Athenaeum Hotel on Piccadilly http://www.athenaeumhotel.com/ to drink champagne with one of my garden heros, Patrick Blanc http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/ and watch as Tim Richardson is nearly decapitated by a flying plant. It has been dislodged from the top Patrick’s stunning new planting on the outside walls of this otherwise lumpen building. Well, there’s a high wind. Tim, showing sang froid worthy of Queen Victoria, simply picks up the plant tries to replant it in the hotel’s window box. I bring Patrick over and tell him what’s just happened. Patrick is alarmed and says to Tim:

‘Be careful – that is a very special plant.’

Patrick is a consummate plantsman
.

Lusciously lean James Alexander Sinclair has been in touch to tell me about The Guardian’s sexy gardens piece yesterday. Garden filth is a particular favourite of mine. Contact me if you’d like to come to one of the Erotic Gardens talks I’m giving, for charity, in Oxford and London.    

It was Ian, staunch defender of the RHS – that hallowed heaven of all things horticultural – who said that we should broaden our horizons and not reject a garden without plants. Blimey. Post-Chaucerian treble negative apart I enjoyed this radical sentiment from the editor of The Garden.