One thing you can say about planning a show garden - it’s never dull. Even if the whole thing turns out to be a disaster, at least I can safely say I’ve completely baffled the neighbours with my back garden antics.

One of the reasons I opted for a log pile rather than, say, a patio or a wall, is that I have absolutely zero hard landscaping skills and I thought piling logs would be, well, easy. But it turns out, making logs pile up in an artistic way without falling down is a bit harder in reality than on paper.

With nerves gnawing at my ability to sleep, and still unable to use the actual dead wood in my garden as the tree surgeon hadn’t come yet, I ordered a slightly insane quantity of kiln dried logs* and started playing a bizarre game of Jenga in the garden.

My first attempt, at the end of a long day at work, was a bit of a mess. I was too tired, I had no real plan, the logs just kept falling down, and whenever I sat down to have a rest my four year old plonked herself down in my lap and told me that I should stick to growing flowers. As the light faded, I stomped huffily inside and spent the evening watching log stacking YouTube videos by Canadian lumberjacks.

The following morning, having absorbed the quite obvious suggestion that the largest pieces of wood should go at the bottom, I managed to get the logs to pile into an imperfect spiral. It still wasn’t quite right, but it was a vast improvement on the day before.

What I still need to do is to find a way for all the logs to face outwards, neatly, as while I want the show border to look naturalistic, I also want to balance this with order. In short, I don’t want it to look like a complete mess.

At some unspecified date (he keeps cancelling), a kind - if unreliable - tree surgeon is spending the day in my garden and will hopefully be able to fashion me a collection of identical-length logs, some pizza-slice shaped, which will give stability to the spiral. I’m also looking into ways to pin logs together, inspired by this video from RHS Bridgewater.

Lumberjacking aside, I’ve been thinking about how to dress the sculpture so it looks like it has been rotting down for years. Moss is one option, and as I have a north facing, very mossy garden, I have decided to scrape and cultivate it in seed trays, over a thin layer of gorgeous Dalefoot Compost**. I’ve also been dividing Alchemilla mollis and digging up self seeded ferns from around the garden to plant in between the logs. Will it work? Or will the whole thing be absolutely ridiculous? Time will tell, but I am having fun along the way.

*We do have a wood burner and had run out of logs but ever since ordering 6 wheelie bins of them, it hasn’t been cold enough to actually burn any of them. Still, we’re now all set for the next three winters!

** Dalefoot have very kindly supplied me with their beautiful compost for growing plants for the show, for which I will be eternally grateful.

This article was originally published in Garden Folk Magazine.