Gold for a golden era at Hampton Court

Gold for a golden era of gardening – Mary Payne and team win for Winchester Growers in the Daily Mail Pavilion at Hampton Court 2007

A Village Post Office, Garage and Market Garden

Village garage: anyone remember these?

Gardens Monthly contributor Mary Payne (MBE) is celebrating winning Gold with her team for their 1950s-style market garden at this year's Hampton Court Palace Flower Show (3-8 July).

Alongside Audrey Daw, Mike Mann and Jon Wheatley, Mary has spent the last few exhausting weeks preparing A Village Post Office / Garage and Market Garden in the Daily Mail Pavilion for Cornwall-and-Lincolnshire-based Winchester Growers.

Pigs inspire two new dahlias

The design, both remarkable and ambitious in scale, is set against a Kentish village green, post office and garage. It reflects how a small, family-owned market garden of yesteryear would look, with coldframes, rows of vegetables and brightly coloured flowers for cutting, in front of a glasshouse and potting shed. There's even a pig pen with resident pigs. At one end, a Morris Minor pickup (still in use) is on hand to transport boxes of flowers and veg to the village market.

In the 1950s, many cut flowers and vegetables were grown in the open for market sale and sold locally, with the emphasis on small-scale production, growing skills and fresh produce. Garden designer Audrey Daw worked with Mike Mann of Winchester Growers using local Cornwall and Somerset suppliers. Vibrant dahlias and lilies stood out among the flowers on show.

Delighted with the team's medal, Mary commented: 'Winning a Gold Medal was amazing. I really did not think we could pull off that sort of standard over such a large area. Everyone commented that it was the attention to detail that made it so good and that we must have done hours of research – not a bit of it – just my memories!

'We could not design the ornamental planting until the dahlias arrived from Cornwall, so just had to order the associated plants and hope it would work out. The dahlias surpassed my expectations, so designing the three colour-themed borders became easy. We were so lucky to have an excellent landscape team and so many folk gave assistance in so many ways, for which we are immensely grateful.'

Winchester Growers is the UK's leading grower and packer of daffodil bulbs. The company also specialises in lilies and holds the National Collection of dahlias. The names of two new dahlias at the show 'Butch' and 'Sundance' have been inspired by the 'Tamworth Two' famous pig double-act. The pigs caused a media furore in 1998 when they escaped on route to the slaughter house, went on the run and were later rescued and rehoused. Visitors to the garden were treated to a view of real pigs in a traditional pig house.

Mary Payne will be familiar to Gardening.co.uk members as one of our Q&A experts providing solutions to your gardening problems on the Forum. Repeat Chelsea medal winner, Jon Wheatley, who like Mary is a Somerset-based horticulturalist, also contributes to Q&A in Gardens Monthly magazine and on Gardening.co.uk.

Winchester Growers holds the National Collection of dahlias

Flowers that lasted well were popular

Fresh veg, sold locally

Advertising tea in the village shop

A working garden with compost heap

Images by Beth Galloway.