Behind the scenes

Anyone who’s been following us on Instagram recently will know it's been a busy start to the year for Genus.  This week the cameras came to the garden to catch us carrying out seasonal tasks and highlighting plants within the garden.  We like to think it was our planning but the weather couldn’t have been better.  Blue sky with occasional high wispy clouds and little or no wind made it a joy to be out in just our Genus thermal tops and gillets.

We’d been planning the day for a number of weeks and, remembering advice from friends working behind the scenes on Gardeners World, we kept back certain tasks  so as not to use up all the interesting jobs prior to filming.

Tom Coleman, our social media expert took us to one side from time to time for a plant portrait and then it would be back to the tasks in hand, planting wallflowers, pinching out sweet peas, potting on, mulching the strawberry beds or thinning out the bamboo culms - all the while photographer Chris Boulton would be flat on his back and upside down catching us from a worm's eye view.

Former Highgrove gardener Nicola Hope joined us for the day to act as model (pictured) - an important aspect of the day was to have real gardeners doing real jobs in a genuine working garden.

By 2:00pm we were ready for a late lunch served up by Genus CEO Sue with an amazing  soup made from homegrown Jerusalem artichokes.  Food miles?  About 10 metres!!

As the sun set and the air chilled, Mr Todd the local fox traversed the dry stone wall leading to the copse, no doubt hoping that the pheasant foraging beneath our peanut feeders would be caught unaware.  A sharp alarm call suggested the ruse had been foiled.