Behind The Scenes – Love Your Garden 2017: Episode 8 – Blackpool Zoo

John Paul resides at Blackpool Zoo full-time as a live-in zookeeper. So we came in to create a private retreat for the zoo’s dedicated and hard working keepers, and, as usual, we had great fun along the way.

Here are Alan and Frances getting into position for us to do the ‘Plan Chat’ where we discuss what we are going to do on the garden. Our cameraman Simon is also ready to go here, as we get ready for another roller coaster ride of garden creation here on Love Your Garden.

Stormbringer, Lloyd, our soundman, nonchalantly enjoying the fact that he has brought no rain with him again, and hoping that he is going to lose his nickname of many years.

Here I am relaxing with a T-Rex while collecting gunnera leaves with which to make my bird bath. Obviously, I didn’t think that this creature could harm me in any way…

But clearly I was wrong. There’s nothing worse than being eaten by an extinct monster in the middle of filming. The directors hate it.

Here is our director Jonathon in his zookeeper/Indiana Jones/Jurassic Park outfit with his blue shirt and khaki shorts. Alan and I usually wear trousers for all of our shoots, but as you can see a lot of the crew are in shorts and were laughing it up at us while we were sweating out. They laughed, that is, until we got swarmed by flying ants for two days straight, and Alan and I were smiling while everyone else was scratching their legs.

Here you can see Frances up on the ladders doing some graft. She always gets stuck right in, and is just as good with artwork and construction as with plants, and she did a brilliant job.

Both of our directors, Natalie and Jonathon, instructing Jake on best positioning for some shots here.

I had to do it. The hat. The old cap stayed in the car this time, with something more suited to Jurassic Park (or zookeeping) on my head. This one’s great for keeping rain or sun out of my eyes.

Frances showing off her art skills again here with a bit of stencilling. I really loved this effect and even got to help out with a bit of the stencilling myself on the other side.

Here I am rocking the protective glasses, staying safe as I installed those wires into position.

And a few minutes later the glasses were off and everyone was trying to photobomb my shot.

This line of coffee cups may look like some sort of feature, but actually it happened gradually. Someone popped their cup on top when they were done, and then we all started doing it as we finished our cuppas, until we had this marvellous work of art.

Here is a group of the JP Landscaping team, all getting together after a phenomenal amount of hard work. Pleasure working with these guys; they were true professionals.

This one cracks me up. When we started filming we had these plastic explorers hats, but they still had their labels on because they had to go back into the gift shop after. Unfortunately, Alan didn’t realise this when he put his on.

Here you can see the plants coming into position. We’re drawing to the end now, and you can see Katie and Frances working hard here to get everything in place. We were all very pleased with how the garden was coming together.

Suddenly the heavens opened. Torrential rain that went on and on and on.

Lloyd, as you can see here, will be keeping his nickname – Stormbringer.

Here is our series producer Colin trying to keep our spirits up with a big smile while we waited for the rain to stop. It went on so long that we thought we would have to do the reveal the next day instead, but we hung on and the rain stopped and dried up enough for us to show the garden to the zookeepers.

Here you can see a better shot of the garden, which I think looked fabulous at the end and was a great communal space for the zookeepers.

Katie and I with some of the JP Landscapes boys having a good laugh as we look out on another great garden.

What a pleasure it was to do this for the wonderful people who spend their days caring for all of these animals.