St Albans Gardeners’ Forum

It’s your opportunity to ask questions…

3 Steps to Creating a Garden

13th June 2023

Design, Build and Aftercare

I will be covering quick design tips l use to design a garden, my thoughts on garden design, materials select, how aftercare should be designed in and more…

Ultimately this presentation is for you, so l invite you to send me your questions, your problem areas and what are you interested in knowing more about…

I will then try to weave this into the evenings presentation.

Thanks Craig

Please complete the form…

If you want to send me any picture or drawing my email address…

email: craig@craigmcgibbon.com

MY STORY

I think my parents watched too many episodes of the comedy series The Good Life starring Felicity Kendall and Richard Briers.

I grew up on small holdings living the “good Life”, growing our own fruit and vegetables, rearing animals and tending the land.  I have fond memories of Orchid, our matriarch Jersey cow, whose daughters were all named after flowers.  The sons ended up in the freezer or bartered to the local homestead community after enjoying a happy few years.

I remember Miss Piggy, a Gloucester Old Spot pig, who as young children my sister and l loved to ride like a pony.  We looked forward to the birth of piglets, with soft velvet noses and their crazy playtimes.

When l was 11 years old we moved to a medieval hall with three acres of land, orchards and farm buildings, sold to my parents by an eccentric antiques dealer.  The house was liveable but the gardens were derelict.

My parents started to create a vegetable garden, a formal herb garden, rebuild garden walls, install a large patio terrace and other landscaping projects, which l helped with on weekends and holidays.

An old farm hand and jack of all trades, would help with projects.  He was truly old school, passing knowledge down in the same way he was taught.  It was from him that l learnt how to mix cement, build walls, pillars, edging, layer a hedge and numerous other skills.

At school l took interest in Craft, Design and Technology and studied to become an Engineer, working for several corporations after university.  After ten years l became completely disillusioned by corporate life so took eight months off to go travelling.  The best experience l had during this time was spending three months as a Conservation Work Volunteer in Costa Rica.  It was also reignited my interest in building outdoors…

On return to the UK, a few friends asked me to build their garden whilst l looked for work as l had always dabbled in projects in my spare time.  During one landscaping project for a friend l had an interview for an engineering job in my field of expertise.  During the interview, l was asked “Why do you want to work for us?” and all l could think was “I don’t!  I just want to get back to building the deck”.  I stumbled through my worse interview ever with this revelation.  To my surprise the next day l was offered the job.  I turned down, much to their surprise and went back to building the deck with a huge smile on my face!