As the National Trust and Blue Diamond Octavia Hill Garden, designed by Anne-Marie Powell and the Blue Diamond Team, were presented with the Peoples Choice Award at Chelsea Flower show on Friday, Alan Roper spoke to GTN Xtra about winning the biggest accolade of the show:

"When I turned up and saw the garden on Sunday before the show opened for the first time, having been coming to Chelsea for 20 years and just looking at the complexity and variety and the colour palette of the planting, I knew in my heart that this was a gardener’s garden and therefore it would get the People's Choice Award. I knew that on Sunday, and I'm glad that we've been validated by the people that matter, our customers, gardeners, they rightly saw this as a garden that they could relate to and be inspired by. It's been a huge journey, I remember it was two years ago when I said to National Trust, let's do a garden. It took an amount of time to persuade them to fund half of it. I wanted from the start my Blue Diamond team to be a part of the design process. And they learnt a lot under Anne-Marie Powell on that journey. So, I'll say a really big thank you all of them, and they've really enjoyed it.

"I think part of the journey has been enjoying the journey. It's not just about the medal. It's just being part of something that's quite special and of course, this goes back to Bridgemere Show Gardens to join our 15 other gardens, which is great that it's going back there, particularly now it's been voted People's Choice. Bernard, who manages the Bridgemere Gardens has already told me I'm going to need an extra 20 hours a week to look after it because of all the planting. He said a really good quote; "it's the only garden that you'd want to live with."

"I've said to the team, and there's a lot of time to go, but in three years’ time I'd like to be back to do another show garden. But this time with what they've learned of the process, this will be a Blue Diamond design garden. And I don't care if we come out with a no medal or a bronze, but it would be lovely to see if we as a team can produce a show garden. Yes. And so, I've earmarked three years’ time, I'll be 65, so that's quite a nice round number to do it. And three years gives us plenty of time to try and do justice to the main avenue. So that's the plan.

"The one thing I try to do is give people ownership and allow people with passion and creativity to thrive in a business. I've got a lot of great people with passion and energy. So I think with them we can really have a go and do something for three years time.

"Last week I think it was pretty tough for the industry, trade wise, it wasn't the brilliant week. I don't know where that came from because I thought the weather was okay after the bank holiday week when we were 30% up. I've not had any feedback from the centres regarding Chelsea feedback from customers as I've been buried in buying another garden centre. We'll be able to tell you at the end of June when it's all gone through.