We returned today to dismantle the rest of the garden and distribute the plants. But getting into the show ground was like crossing a Baltic border into Russia. Back to back trucks eager to pack up and dispose of their gardens crawled past a dawdle of check points. Finally we got in where we witnessed sad scenes of deconstruction.

Where once had been the gold medal winning ‘Porsche garden’ was now rubble, the Daily Mail cottage was standing in a mud where hours before had been a cottage garden and I caught a grotesque gorilla being carted away on the back of a lorry.

Exhibitors were keen to offer us more plants and material so we now had even more to recycle than what was in our garden.

With the garden dismantled and vehicles laden our convoy out consisted of my brother with a van load for Brockwell Park Community Garden, Carl and Mike with a VW camper filled for community gardens on Carl’s Pimlico estate, Tom with plants for guerrilla gardens in West Kensington, me and a hired truck loaded for stocking up guerrilla gardens in Southwark and Kensal Green, Fiona filled a car for St Mathias Primary School in Hackney and Andrew, as ingenious as ever, cycled off with the giant rope that had been wished for by a visitor earlier in the week.

The only bit of the garden left to be taken out was the big yellow skip. With a few effortless wiggles of his JCB-joy-stick Lionel scooped out the contents, tipped it upside down and plonked it next to the garden ready for collection from the hire company. All that was left of our garden was a muddy scare in the field.

Back in central London as darkness fell Lyla and I were back to the guerrilla front line planting out parts of our recycled garden into their new and final resting places around Southwark, ably assisted by newcomer Helen, a neighbour, who spontaneously and thankfully offered to join in.

Pictures of the plants in the various resting places will follow in subsequent weeks.

It’s the last day and today I got to see the rest of the show. Avenues of show gardens, forests of white tradesmen tents and grand marques covers acres and even straddles a long lake of swans. My favourite are the floral marquees where specialists arrange labeled pots of their specimen plants like 3D encyclopedias.

As the day went by so came the hour to pull apart the garden. I had a shot taken with me and the garden before the ‘break down’ (as the RHS call it) hit. This collapse is not done discretely away from the crowds but is traditionally and traumatically played out in the final hour of the show, as bargain hunters scrum for rich picking. Exhibitors are permitted to sell off their plants. But given that ours were salvaged for free we decided to give a few away to friendly people. Inevitably there was a great rush of interest and we said farewell to the maize, the blue grass stuff (hmm, botanical advice welcome here thanks), the irises and some of the veg. The rest is to be distributed to a great range of different gardens over the next few days.

I spotted a couple of BMWs leaving the show ground heavily laden with botanical bounty, (perhaps even briefly carbon neutral for their drive home!?)

Every day, as I stand by the Recycled Garden and talk about how it came to be and about guerrilla gardening, more and more guerrilla gardeners step forward from the crowd and reveal their activity. Most also agree for me to snap them. It’s not just really encouraging to know there are so many out there but meeting more independent guerrillas face to face is a reminder of the great range of people busy just doing it. Do not assume guerrilla gardeners are just urban tower-block residents like me but the ranks include people from the suburbs and the countryside too. There is so much opportunity.

For two days now another visitor came has come hovering on my trolley of books, a beautiful Red Admiral butterfly, clearly keen to join our ranks. Butterflies are welcome.

Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is now open to the general public and to bolster staffing on The Recycled Garden I encouraged my horticultural college friend Peeree to bring her daughter Georgia and her Brit School friends Hayley and Joy. These professional performers relished bringing the garden to life until they were utterly upstaged by the elderly but formidable rabble rouser Norman Willis, who I first met on Monday. He was back to bring his Trade Union experience to the show and spent hours talking to the passing crowd about The Recycled Garden project and guerrilla gardening. He even marched off to the BBC enclosure to rally them into filming the garden, after they spuriously cut the story from their show coverage earlier in the week (”because their presenter Joe Swift was soggy” was one excuse).

This spectacle drew out more guerrilla gardeners than ever before who shared tales of their projects including Eileen’s silver birch planted in a central reservation in Spelthorpe and Tim’s activity in Coromandel, New Zealand. All were proud to be photographed for this blog. It’s so encouraging to meet people who are out there doing it entirely independent of my guerrilla gardening in central London, and some of them have been quietly active for decades.

It didn’t stop raining today. I know that because I was standing in a puddle all day watching the skies pour and the ground turn from green grass into deep mud as I drummed up interest in our garden.

With the brilliant Percy Patel helping out (though he feared people thought he was trying to sell them samosas) we had lots of interest in our garden, particularly since we now have a medal on display, a GOLD GILT award! (But don’t be fooled, there is no such award and we weren’t in competition… it was just too temptingly easy to knock up a replica certificate on Photoshop and stick on a golden Ferrero Rocher chocolate wrapper as the glittering badge - thanks Andrew for that genius touch.)

The enthusiasm of the wet crowds were not dampened by the weather (probably glad their gardens at home were being soaked) and it was brilliant to meet several active guerrilla gardeners who were all (but one) quite happy to show their faces and proudly describe their illicit activity. Carol from Wandsworth even brought me photos of her magnificent tree pit planting.

I took a break from chatting with the visitors to talk with Johnnie Amos from BBC Radio Northamptonshire, Mario Batali on Martha Stewart Living Radio and Anna Kuhn-Osius from Deutsche Welle who got the message out live around the world.

Today was the first public show day, for members of the RHS and friends. The deluge last night had perked up the garden ready for the crowds and the sun shone for most of the day. Our trolley was wheeled out laden with pamphlets, free sunflower seeds, Guerrilla Gardening.org Lavender pillows and my book Tom, Lucy, Debra, Andrew and I did brisk business handing them out to the crowds. Best of all was meeting other guerrilla gardeners who were delighted to share their stories of illicit gardening and meet like minded souls.

The Recycled Garden opened to the officially critical audience today, that is special guests and media. We adapted our old trolley with the addition of a blanket into a mobile PR machine pilled high with bits and bobs to push the guerrilla gardening and Recycled Garden story to a friendly but confused crowd.

Almost everyone loved our garden. Best were the school children who scurried around our plot and…

also ex Trade Union Congress General Secretary Norman Willis, (who these days is better known as a columnist in CrossStitcher magazine). He loved what we’d done and stood by our garden flagging down pedestrians to stop and look.

Rob Brydon (he’s a funny Welsh celebrity) walked by oblivious to my encouragement to buy a guerrilla grown lavender pillow but we did make an impression on veteran consumer champion Esther Ransom, who took a pack of our sunflower seeds and smiled encouragingly. Best of all were the few people who stopped to reveal that they were recent new recruits to GuerrillaGardening.org and had just begun their horticultural battles.

Thunder claps and lightening strikes turned the show into a slowly baked mud pudding. Our tent flooded so we abandoned ship and sought refuge in next doors shelter who served us Pims from a kettle in a origami paper cup and reassured us the opening night was like this every year. The night ended with a soggy gala party of fireworks bursting over the palace and a train journey back into central London in a carriage full of plant loving passengers keen to chat and share their love of plants. If only every late night commute was like that.

Drizzle and snow descended on the garden this morning. Fortunately the snow soon stopped because it was billowing out of a machine in the next door garden, (Francesca’s Magic Garden) but the drizzle continued. These were good conditions for Mike, our expert turfer. He arrived with a half moon edger and did his magic.

While out with my trolley hoping to pick up a few colourful bedding plants I bumped into a BBC film crew and their presenter Joe Swift who stopped to ask what I was up to with some a tray of miserable looking marigolds. That chat will be broadcast on BBC2 on Monday at 7pm but you won’t get to see the gardening on TV until later in the week. As well as encounters with the media came encounters with the very serious and rather ominous looking huddles of RHS judges. In sombre raincoats and carrying clip boards they silently moved from plot to plot making their assessments. Fortunately we’re a ’show feature’ so are not in competition. More important was a visit from Health and Safety, who gave us the all clear and handed over the essential tickets for tomorrow evening’s Gala opening.

More plants and materials continued to arrive - gravel made from recycled sanitary ware, mulch, vegetables and blue grass. With little space left it was good to see some materials leave to go into other gardens - we have become a place for other gardeners to take from who are need quick cheap fixes. Andrew had the bright idea to set the spare plants aside and hand them out as free gifts to visitors next week - so do visit our stand (Find us on the show map at B34). There’s even more on offer. I’ll also be selling Guerrilla Gardening London Lavender Pillows and signed copies of my book, On Guerrilla Gardening.

And now the garden is finished we are putting plans in place to distribute the materials after the show. E-mail richard@guerrillagardening.org if you are interested in helping.

Today was a dilemma, a smash up, a crunch and a nail biting (if only I weren’t wearing gloves) race. We have a day to go but we are torn between making use of discarded plants, making an attractive garden and building it in time for the opening on Monday… despite the fact the majority plants are only heading are way now, at the final hour. And now we have the media hyping this exhibit too. Today the Telegraph described our garden as ‘perhaps the most intriguing event at the show’.

This garden must be not giant compost heap nor ugly mish-mash. We want to show that discarded plants, whether from a build up or breakdown of a flower show, or discarded from garden centres or friendly neighbours, have a place in an attractive garden. But what do you do if you’re offered a palette of blobby orange drive-way cobbles at the eleventh hour, or indeed metres and metres of mature beech hedging? (Turn it away and feel guilty, that’s what, our evolving design just can’t stretch to take it).

Andrew, Lyla and new-comer Debra joined me today to productively squabble over the placement of cabbages, the alignment of rope, the choice of sharp sand versus builders sand, and the balance of white vs pink Lavetera. We are a mildly democratic team and I’m glad to say the debate led to snipper-like plant placement, a dynamic momentum and far more frequent tea breaks (thank you Debra) than before. And just as I began to wonder if the RHS would find some reason to exclude us from the show two men arrived with sledge hammers and iron rods and hammered in our official signage: “Guerrilla Gardening.org - The Recycled Garden”.

The supply of plants to recycle slowed as the day went by and there are still some worrying blank patches. Lyla went skip diving (but not in our skip) to salvage some grasses but this was not enough. In one corner we gave up waiting for more plants and filled it with green-grey gravel. This is perhaps good news for the show, but for us it’s not quite the balance we wanted. Hopefully some medium high (cabbage-ish sized) plants of a purpley hue will come are way to finish off the front corner sometime tomorrow. Watch this space.

With three days left and an influx of discarded plants expected I staffed up today and picked up both Lyla and Pam on my way to the show ground. Andrew cycled in soon after, making us more than just a duo of workers for the first time all week.

By late morning I noticed Nigel (a designer who has exhibited at the show 17 times), was sitting back sipping tea while he surveyed his completed garden. I think he went home soon after that. But for us, with the great mass of plants only due in now, there was much to do.

To make sure plants went into our skip rather than any others we taped notices to our backs. Lyla and Pam then laid the broken bricks as edging, Andrew finished the paving and I got on with more planting.

And then the plants began pouring in: first some leggy Alchemilla mollis and dark pink Cosmos, then a big batch of golden Euyonimous…

a box of our favourite sunflowers (Helianthus annuus ‘Russian Giant’)…

a trolley of turf…

and then masses and masses of purple sage (Salvia officinalis Purpurascens), purple cabbage and an hard-to-recognise big purple bulbous vegetable-thing all of which was far too much for one exhibitor to fit in their van and recycle elsewhere.

Their transport problem today will be one we have too at the end of this show and we need to solve it. So I can make use of quite a lot as a guerrilla gardener in central London we will have surplus. If any of what you see in the Recycled Garden takes your fancy please let me know at richard@guerrillagardening.org and I’ll see if I can arrange to have you pick it up after July 13.

We worked until dusk planting great flows of plants, missed the last hot tea orders at the catering wagon but kept going fueled by Lyla’s home made biscuits and orange squash from a flask.

Back in May, at the dismantlting of the Chelsea Flower Show, Ben found two giant tubs of runner beans and declared them magnificent centrepieces for The Recycled Garden… but then promptly took them for a communal vegetable garden somewhere in south London. Fair enough - they’re being recycled far more appropriately there than in the skip - but it left me needing something big to replace them.

Fortunately my neighbour Terry had the perfect plant. He lives in a ground floor flat with a small back garden enclosed by caging. Unfortunately his very elegant Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) had grown through the wire and he desperately needed it releasing. If we could do it the tree would be ours.

So Andrew arrived with a well equipped tool kit and a big truck, and after two hours of careful surgery we extracted the pine unharmed and took it to Hampton Court Palace.

It now stands magnificently in the middle of the skip.

This heralded the arrival of a few more plants: some chlorotic maize and some more variegated hostas which I began to plant as great flows pouring out of the skip.

We also laid some of the York stone paving with an old RHS plastic banner as protection beneath the sand and broken bricks as edging.

The day ended with a lot of thunder, a fair amount of rain and me getting muddy through to my pants.

Fellow guerrilla gardener Tom (an ex-JCB engineer) helped out today and together we monitored RHS Lionel’s lifting, dropping and filling of the skip, and got busy with some spade work tidying the plot’s turf edge. Suddenly our garden seems significantly advanced. But next door and all around us sit other gardens that look like they’ve been there for a decade or so - someone has planted a vineyard, another has even built a thatched cottage - and we haven’t planted ANYTHING (unless you count the skip).

So with a trolley in tow Tom and I visited other gardens begging to see if there were plants to recycle. The Porsche garden gave us some variegated hostas and the Africa garden had some (yet to bloom) African marigolds which was very kind of them both, but we need much much more. Everyone’s telling us the deluge will start pouring on us tomorrow. (But if there’s really nothing much to recycle from the build up to the show perhaps that’s a good thing… just not for our garden!)

Oliver Bishop-Young is the man to go to for a skip. Well he knows people with cheap skips (£50) and before I even got to the show ground one had been dropped there for me this morning by Elliot’s. Today’s mission was to give it a fresh coat of paint in Cornfield Yellow. And what a blissful way to spend the day, painting, watching it dry and then painting some more. The only problem was leaving the skip unattended, because people began to start filling it… and I’ll be filling it with plants not rubbish.

Meanwhile some workmen came by to erect my pagoda tent. Which made me wonder about how great it would be to camp here right by the garden (except of course that would be guerrilla camping and I’m simply not brave enough to risk the wrath of the RHS).

Since the end of May plants from the Chelsea Flower Show and the Chelsea Gardener have been resting in various gardens around London. Today they moved again. This time Harry at Truckpoint couldn’t hire us the Luton with the handy electric lift because someone had broken it, so he gave me a basic Luton for free. Lyla and I managed to salvage the plants without the lift but sadly there were a few casualties. Several plants in the Neasden garden had perished from dehydration. It was a reminder that not everything can be easily recycled and that plants are best left in the gardens of people who actually garden (and don’t just cover their patch with weed suppressing sheeting!) Fortunately our best specimens were doing very well and we unloaded them into temporary locations. Planting will begin later in the week.

The ground is rock solid. Fortunately there’s a friendly man with a JCB cruising around the show ground who will dig where ever you ask. Within moments he had scraped off the turf and dug a big hole which we’ll be dropping the skip later in the week. Two plots along Ditton Walk Nigel is planting a military memorial garden and it’s nearly finished. He offered us a trolley of York stone. Further afield Peter’s eco garden had lots of meadow grass for us. We’re on a roll now.

The approach to the Hampton Court show ground is breath taking. Exhibitors are ushered along a narrow drive that snakes through the expanse of deer park that is dotted with trees, deer and the occasional stray swan. In the distance white tents appeared and then the palace itself. There was something of the 18th century battle preparation about the scene, the clonks of metal hammering , serious energy, gangs of men preparing for a battle. And then I remembered this was a peaceful scene, I was to be no guerrilla here, I just had a 10 metre square plot of hard turf to start landscaping.

In welcome was wonderful. Steve showed me my plot and talked me through health and safety. Today was not about gardening but about laying the ground work. Mandy walked me around the other gardens (vineyards, a canal-side cottage, ancient olive groves, an Georgian town house garden with integrated car port etc) and introduced me to garden designers and their contractors, endorsing the garden and encouraging them to hand over their excess materials. Everyone was really enthusiastic and already had materials to recycle.

I just needed to clear one thing - the garden concept. Originally I had described the design as ‘just a beautiful garden’.This was sufficient to get me the plot. But in the intervening weeks I realised I needed a more powerful idea that would visually communicate ‘these plants were all discarded’. I then remembered Oliver Bishop-Young’s art project at Goldsmith’s College. Back in April I’d helped him fill a skip (dumpster if you’re American) with flowers. It was a 30 minute project, one of several experiments that involved filling the skip with different installations, but I noticed how passers by assumed the contents was rubbish.

So I told them I’d be filling a skip with flowers. But unlike other skips filled with flowers, this would be partially submerged in the ground. It would be as if the skip had been dropped from a great height and the garden had spilled out of it. Just as I left a couple of contractors called by with a wheel barrow full of bricks. “Did I want them?” Yes, I said, and I had the makings of a garden!

Construction for the Royal Horticultural Society Hampton Court Palace Flower Show has begun. But not of my garden. Mandy, the show manager, phoned up wondering where I was. Although I’d cleared my diary I couldn’t budge the important matter of an exam, one set by the RHS! It was not to make me eligible to exhibit at their show but something I’ve been studying all year - RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticulture. So while holes are being dug in the great deer park and other exhibitors are wheeling in their hard landscaping I’m in an exam hall in Primrose Hill answering questions about the benefits of container grown trees versus bare root stock and the optimum width for a ‘no dig’ bed.

At Rob’s birthday drinks, in the leafy but noisey courtyard of an east end club, I was introduced to Paul. He works at the Chelsea Gardener, which like most garden centres needs to discard plants from time to time. These are past their seasonal prime, damaged or diseased. Did I want some? Yes please. And a week later I was round to fill my car with whatever I could find. Amongst the treats was a bright blue hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla), a lot of plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) which unfortunately wouldn’t flower in time for the show, a rather tired bay tree (Laurus nobilis) and some hail-battered sedum. Beggars can’t be choosers. I took the lot. I had a big garden to fill. Perhaps things could be nursed back to health in time?

At the top of my tower block is a communal balcony. I share the garden with neighbours and hoped they would appreciate our temporary bumper display of beautiful plants salvaged from the Chelsea Flower Show. But someone complained anonymously to the council about a lack of space for deck chairs.

Reluctantly I accepted space was more important than my recycled garden project and I persuaded Lyla’s parents to take in more of the (increasingly well-traveled) plants.

With plants now scattered in back gardens around London I was able to forget about the Recycled Garden for a few weeks. It was a month away and I needed to earn a living. But despite being back at a desk in a new office for a few weeks I was reminded frequently, by the postman, that I was soon to be showing a garden at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Big brown envelopes stuffed with manuals, health and safety forms, flyers and tickets were arriving from the Royal Horticultural Society and demanding attention. I don’t enjoy paperwork but it was very exciting to discover what creating the garden (now code name B34) entailed. I’d have a little pagoda tent next to the garden and there was to be a gala night of fireworks and jazz bands to open the show. Mandy also reassured me that the garden would not be short of plants. It came as a strange relief to discover plants could also be recycled from exhibitors at Hampton Court before the show was over. They sometimes buy more than they need and in the race to finish their gardens can struggle to find sustainable solutions to their spare plants. I would need to persuade them to send them to my plot.

More temporary housing for our plants was needed urgently. With my communal balcony full and the Patel patio spilling over we looked further afield. Lyla recommended friends with an empty garden in Neasden, so we took the lorry and our shopping trolley there.

The garden really was empty, just one great big black carpet of weed suppressing matting. On either side the neighbours’ gardens were jungles of lazy neglect. Oh to have a back garden! But these people had abandoned them and drawn down the blinds - on one side a child’s swing was almost submerged in undergrowth and on the otherside the garden shed was collapsing into the wilderness. At least with neglect like this our potted plants were unlikely to be pinched.

The RHS are working hard at trying to recycle plants from their flower show. This year they subcontracted the co-ordination of this project to the Charities Advisory Trust who in turn assigned salvage slots to applicants. I was invited to arrive the day after the flower show and help myself to plants from the recycling yard. With Harry’s truck now empty of our first load I looked forward to filling it again with all the plants promised to us by exhibitors the day before. But there was almost nothing. Not because it had already been recycled but because the Charities Advisory Trust had struggled to remove anything from the show ground and were not allowing any of us volunteers inside. We were first offered breeze blocks, then coir compost and eventually assorted pot plants (mostly crushed osteospermum), two miserable sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) forced into flower, a droopy olive tree (Olea europaea) and eventually a lot of frangrant thyme (Thymus sp.) It was heart breaking and frustrating and for an hour and a half we pleaded and bickered. I wondered how I would ever fill the 10 metre square plot with recycled plants having barely salvaged a quarter of that area so far.

I live in a tower block. There’s small communal balcony on my floor but it was totally inadequate for storing lots of plants. I needed safe home where the plants could stay in good health ready for planting at Hampton Court in late June. Lyla offered her parents’ back garden.

And so, with newspaper down and doors thrown open the three of us wheeled in barrow after barrow and covered their patio with a beautiful temporary display. Her parents were delighted.

The flower show was now over. I’d got several exhibitors on side, I’d lined up plants and I’d watched Chelsea begun to be dismantled. Recycling does go on. There is a brilliant ’sell off’ in the last hour of the show as hundreds of plants leave with visitors who recycle the plants in their gardens. My garden was to be made of the leftovers, and there were a lot of them.

But somewhere in the approval process for The Recycled Garden important logistical details that I needed got lost. I had got in as a member of the ‘press’ (which I’m not) but I needed to get out plants out and into a truck as a ‘contractor’. I had no pass.

At least I had a truck. Harry at Truckpoint did me a half price deal (£137) for an old rusty Luton van (”I’m scrapping it next week anyway”, he said) but I had no access to get it into the show ground. Nor in fact did I have passes for the army of volunteers I’d arranged to help carry the plants out. Fortunately I’m a guerrilla at heart and I found a parking space in the gateway of a building site nearby and I encouraged my wiley troops to persuade exhibitors leaving the show to hand over their passes for us to use. This worked. The final hurdle was blagging some high visibility jackets (that we’d not been warned we needed). And we were in.

Over three hours Lyla, Ben, Kate and I removed a lorry load of plants. We now needed some where to store them.

I was told to go to the side entrance and collect a passes. I was to get into the last day of the Chelsea Flower Show masquerading as a member of the press pack. I was not sure why this camouflage was needed but I didn’t ask. I was in and on a mission to find plants to recycle. I had made leaflets speak to exhibitors and try and secure plants before they got taken away or, at worst, ended up in a skip.

Chelsea Flower Show is the most spectacular event in Britain’s gardening calender. Huge, elaborate, expensive and usually also beautiful gardens flourish in a small park near the Thames for just six days before being dismantled and preserved only in the pages of garden magazines and exhibitor portfolios. They are inspiring but a little heart breaking too. Everywhere I looked I wondered what would happen to the plants and if perhaps I could save some for the Recycled Garden and a life beyond that.