In haste because the questions you both raise need to be addressed before the Gardeners’ World programme goes out this evening.
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These are tough issues and they have already been the subject of a great deal of agonized discussion; any competition does eventually reach a point of imperfect compromise, but I am not prepared to make the compromise quite yet.
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The most important thing to say is that, at this stage, we do not wish to exclude anybody at all from following the project with a view to competing. The fact is that we are not clear yet in what form we will ask for submissions and how precisely we will define the applicants we want. The reason for this is because the discussion on the website since its launch in July has already powerfully informed the way we have been thinking about the competition. For instance, it has convinced me that initial submissions must be entirely anonymous.

 We hope that this level of exchange continues; it was certainly always the intention that public response of this kind would help to write a set of rules that were very open and offered an even chance to all comers.
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Having said this, I do think that it is also important by whatever means to preserve the connection between the plants themselves and the overall design. By way of illustration, in many ways I take the garden that Nori and Sandra made for themselves (and for me and many others) at Hadspen as a model of a process that I am seeking to replicate in this competition. That is, the unique identity of their garden grew, almost literally, out of a knowledge of plants, and of the science of plants. The vividness of any visitors’ experience came out of a sense of the direct connection between the two elements.
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I don’t want to lose this connection if I can possibly avoid it; this may mean that some of the people with good new ideas (whom you describe so well) feel ultimately that they are not in a position to apply.
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So far as prizes go, there will certainly be in due course a definitive shortlist of a minimum of five applicants; we expect to offer a fee for them to develop their ideas in more detail. When we come to interview these candidates we will certainly be giving at least as much weight to their vision and determination as to their technical knowledge and experience.
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Overall, the key is to remember that it is an outstanding garden that we are trying to create – we are now experimenting with the best ways of making this possible.
It’s really important for anybody who is seriously interested to read carefully through the correspondence already posted on the site if they are to have a clear understanding of this priority.
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