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Southport Flower Show 17-19th August 2000 The Competition Gardens Other Gardens

The winner in this section is Craig Watkinson who brought us this lovely patio garden, with the unique Southport Pavers used for the path and patio area. These pavers are a little-known gem of the paving world - my paving company worked with them for 3 or 4 years in the 1980s, relaying them to the more traditional and affluent areas of the town, and a few barrowfuls managed to find their way to my kitchen floor. :~)

A small waterfall bounds the garden on the right hand edge, and the seating area is surrounded by raised beds built from reclaimed stone setts and filled with lush planting. As the garden reaches forward, the planting fades to sparse around the shallow pool at the end of the water cascade. The garden engenders a feeling of privacy, of intimacy, and is the ideal venue for a summer's weekend lazy breakfast.

But it's not just the wonderful paving that earned Craig his well-deserved award, just look at the planting! Lush, dense, rich, with contrasting colours, textures and shapes that warrants closer inspection. Nothing too temperamental or tender, just well-chosen, reliable plants that add another level of richness to the garden.

This oriental style garden by Neil Aughton features a bear spouting water, a beautifully coloured and shaped Japanese Maple and a gazebo constructed from chunky bamboo. The path is simply bark with a few log-slice stepping stones, and the whole plot is surrounded by red and black panel fencing.

The front of the garden is bounded by deep trough planters with a mixture of alpine planting. The raised pond is irregular and edged with slate. At the far end is a self supporting single brick arch over a statue of a bear. This is an uncomplicated, low maintenance garden with lots of interest. However, I felt that the bamboo gazebo was out of scale with the rest of the garden, and the bark chips surfacing seemed cheap and out of character.

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