People and Places

Gold for a golden era at Hampton Court

By Sarah B

Gold for a golden era of gardening – Mary Payne and team win for Winchester Growers in the Daily Mail Pavilion at Hampton Court 2007

A Village Post Office, Garage and Market Garden

Village garage: anyone remember these?

Gardens Monthly contributor Mary Payne (MBE) is celebrating winning Gold with her team for their 1950s-style market garden at this year's Hampton Court Palace Flower Show (3-8 July).

Alongside Audrey Daw, Mike Mann and Jon Wheatley, Mary has spent the last few exhausting weeks preparing A Village Post Office / Garage and Market Garden in the Daily Mail Pavilion for Cornwall-and-Lincolnshire-based Winchester Growers.

Scene from a 1950s' Kentish village

Pigs inspire two new dahlias

The design, both remarkable and ambitious in scale, is set against a Kentish village green, post office and garage. It reflects how a small, family-owned market garden of yesteryear would look, with coldframes, rows of vegetables and brightly coloured flowers for cutting, in front of a glasshouse and potting shed. There's even a pig pen with resident pigs. At one end, a Morris Minor pickup (still in use) is on hand to transport boxes of flowers and veg to the village market.

In the 1950s, many cut flowers and vegetables were grown in the open for market sale and sold locally, with the emphasis on small-scale production, growing skills and fresh produce. Garden designer Audrey Daw worked with Mike Mann of Winchester Growers using local Cornwall and Somerset suppliers. Vibrant dahlias and lilies stood out among the flowers on show.

Delighted with the team's medal, Mary commented: 'Winning a Gold Medal was amazing. I really did not think we could pull off that sort of standard over such a large area. Everyone commented that it was the attention to detail that made it so good and that we must have done hours of research – not a bit of it – just my memories!

'We could not design the ornamental planting until the dahlias arrived from Cornwall, so just had to order the associated plants and hope it would work out. The dahlias surpassed my expectations, so designing the three colour-themed borders became easy. We were so lucky to have an excellent landscape team and so many folk gave assistance in so many ways, for which we are immensely grateful.'