It has been an exhausting time of late. Yesterday I was on the stand I designed and built at Chelsea Flower Show for the British Plant Nursery Guide and we were awarded a Commendation from the RHS.

The stand has had a great deal of media attention, not least because in the middle is a restored pale blue Morris Minor Traveller .

The theme is Kate and William on honeymoon and they have stopped in a Cornish Cove to have a picnic. A beautiful beach hut with oak posts was made by Sussex Oak Framers and Stonemarket supplied the stone sleepers that I used for a curving path and under the car. All the plants have come from British Nurseries and all the sea shells and odd bits of seaweed from West Wittering beach which I ransacked!

All over the sand are mussels which I have to admit I ate! So I kept the shells and used them to scatter over the beach areas.

Designing a trade stand for commercial purpose is so different from a show garden or a domestic one and you have to be aware of the amount of foot traffic on the stand. It was also tricky as I was not allowed to dig into the ground so the plants are in very shallow pockets of sand with hardly any soil around them but they are quite happy and surviving.

 I used a lovely new Verbascum called Blue Lagoon, developed by Thompson and Morgan around the car, pink and white Valerian, Armeria, Erigeron and Cistus. Not too many plants as you don't see too many on the beach but just enough to give a taste of the Cornish Coast.

 In fact due to the heat ,it has been a lovely day at the beach in Chelsea!