Officially we could have dismantled on Sunday but not one of us was that desperate to slog that one out. Queuing to get back onsite after the show closed was not high on the list of priorities. Home and a hot bath and bed before the final onslaught of work was the order of the day.

It’s a rush once the show closes to the public (4:30pm-ish), to find the hi-vis and the steel toe cap boots again, post 5pm the site returns to a building site and all safety rules apply once more.
Monday morning bright and early we arrived with our lovely contractor to pull down the whole thing. Having sold off as many plants and features as we could in the ‘Sell Off Frenzy’ we still had about 1/3rd of our plants left and much of the hard landscape material too.
The RHS require a plan for disposal of the garden which is eminently sensible because us newbie show gardeners are way too optimistic in how much will walk off site on Sunday. We shared a skip with neighbors and in the end hardly anything went into it. We discovered other show folk cruise the site for bargains, just in case, my partner in crime on the garden was far more accommodating to those wanting things for nothing than I was.

Plants came out first and into groups for where they were destined, then the scaffold board fence came down and the path came up, sorted into material types.
The chap who bought the tree arrived to haul it home, down south. Along with that the water feature and all the plumbing it required was collected by one of our wonderful garden sponsors. It will find a new home in their garden next year.

The membrane that remained was useful to steer aggregates into barrows and in the end this and some gravel was all that found it’s way to the skip.
The lovely folk at Dalefoot left me 13 bags of random show sample compost, it was meant to be 3 half opened bags but I am not complaining. That also found it’s way into the cars and vans.

It took about 6.5 hours and 3.5 people to dismantle the garden, pack it into vans, clear the site and get our sign off from the RHS team. Much quicker than we thought but hard graft for those 6.5 hours.

Post Tatton I pit stopped and planted a garden in Shropshire for two days, bus-woman’s holiday, very satisfying and therapeutic way to ease out the aches and pains gained over three incredible weeks.
By 4pm on Monday it was all over. What a ride. Will I be back again? maybe in a year or two, sooner if you would like to sponsor me!
