Congratulations on making that first posting Brian! You are very welcome I can assure you!
You certainly are one modest guy! By way of introduction, I hope you don't mind if I explain a few things to the other members.
Brian was one of the very first people to order Ideas Genie, and in those days i didn't have an on-line booking system.
Ive retrieved your order, a hard copy print out of the page on my (then) website and its dated 12th March 2002.
Heres a little extract from Brians very first email to me:
I am a keen gardener and have been for many years and a member of Hardy Plants Soc. West Yorks Branch. My interest is in plant associations, landscaping, architectural plants and as such I have devised my own Access data base in order to select and coordinate plant features. Your system sounds much more sophisticated than mine so I look forward to looking at it.
I also like photography and computing so it will be a good ways to combine my interests.
I converted Brians database from Access into Ideas Genie format and sent that to Brian.
With Brians permission, I used the database as a demo, for distribution to new customers. It was issued to each and every one of our new customers at the Northwest Flower & Garden show in Feb 2003.
Later, a new idea hatched. I merged it and listings from other customers into a common database, one known famously to you all as the Master Database
.
Most of you will have a copy of the Master, so plug it in, use GA026 to switch to the master, and change the gardener pop-up to Brian Denison.
You'll find a listing of 422 of Brians plants as they were in 2005.
I cant thank you enough for that listing of plants, Brian, and the photos you sent to help me get my Gardening Software products launched.
Brian sent me a Powerpoint file of a lecture he gave to a ladies section of a local Conservative Club.
I extracted the photos for my website.
No, heres where Brian is being rather modest.
A TV company picked up on the photos of Brians garden on my website and made contact asking for Brians contact address.
Very soon, Brian was a competitor in Britain's Best Back Gardens
Trawling through old emails, I find that the judge was Mathew Wilson - curator of Harlow Carr Gardens in Harrogate, now part of the RHS
This quote from an email on 23 Sept 04 gives you an idea of the pressure in preparing your garden for a visit by a TV camera crew:
I will give you the history of events which worked out well due to a combination of hard work and luck. Since last autumn I had started to reorganise the planting as many of them were overcrowded and not performing well. Also as some of the trees and shrubs have matured some plants were not getting enough sun. When I first heard about the interest from Anglia TV (June!), I was still reorganising and a long way from being finished. As you can imagine I then worked frantically to fill in all the gaps and for the first time ever I run out of stock of spare plants in pots. I placed quite a few plants in borders while still in their pots and in some cases used sections of tree stumps or metal frames to give them height and a sense of maturity. At this stage I expected a visit anytime and perhaps as early as July. While still working on the borders I was also busy feeding to try and get more plants in flower for July. At the time, I was sickened by the poor wet weather which was delaying the flowering of many plants, but especially my decorative pots and wall baskets. In the end this worked to my advantage as the pots although a little passed their best were still quite good for late August and I was complimented on them. The late planting of for example Hemerocallis 'Stella D'Oro' also meant it was in flower on 30 August.
22nd Sept 04
Just letting you know the latest situation re TV show. It turned out that despite Christina asking to feature my garden, several were eventually being considered and a pilot video was prepared of each to be assessed back at Anglia TV. An anxious time but eventually mine was one of the gardens selected for the programme.The TV people spent a whole day filming my garden on 30th August.
After a number of reschedules, the TV show went out on Saturday, 8 Oct 05 and it was broadcast nationwide on ITV.
19th October 05 - me to Brian:
Your show was transmitted as scheduled. I tipped off as many people as I could.
Your garden won of course! My wife also watched, and she just went Ooooh... that garden is the best by far. It was of course! A very deserved winner.
We watched both shows (back to back transmission) and I have to say they were brilliant. I actually felt nervous, even though I knew you had won. One of the other gardens got very high marks.
The good news to the end: another great gardening friend of mine also taped it, and turned it into a DVD. He has some very special equipment for doing this sort of thing.
That great gardening friend was Whis4ey, now a member of our forum. The DVD is still available for circulation.
I found another memento in trawling through our emails: on 6th August 05 i confirmed that I had received a a CD containing Brians talk on 'The making of a Garden' and some pics from summer 2005
We lost contact for a while, and I have to say I'm delighted that Brian has joined us on the forum.
Laurie has already extended a warm welcome and I know you will be as excited as me to welcome Brian to our community. Another great plant loving gardener joins the ranks
I could have written lots more, but I'm sure this topic will develop into an interesting exchange.
Delighted to have you here Brian, and I hope you enjoy your retirement!
