I can't believe in a few days I can l get out of this chair and get away from this screen! The final stage has been a contrast of fretting over details like whether grp and gel coat layers can go over the the neoprene strip at the top of a concrete movement joint underwater and FINALLY having a flash of inspiration on how to present my concept in a way that can be understood in a glance. Going back over all my past work to gather it up has been a great experience. I have loved almost every subject I studied would happily go back and do some of them again. Who would pass up the chance to sit in on David Cary's fantastic lectures for example?!

Final Crit at Hadlow. Went really well I think. It was great to see everyones work on the wall. Felt a bit wobbly during the presentation and forgot to explain a few things in the right order, which left some questions hanging at the end. But was told it went well! I feel really pretty clear about what needs to happen next apart from being told to revisit the planting. I had a good think about it today and feel that actually the supposed issues with my planting, like telling me I had too much scent are bascially just plain wrong (what people like the smell of carbon monoxide in the morning do they?) and it's now up to me to apply myself to explaining my the reasoning behind my choices better, because they ARE the right choices.

Tip for the lighting concept plan - matt finish - shiny just reflects to much with all that ink on it and you can't see it. I'm really chuffed with mine. Will it stand up to the J and J challenge. Hmm.

Got to watch out for the dreaded holding pattern. So tired and eyesore, if I don't watch it, I'm just staring at the screen in a kind of mental loop and nothing happens. Oh dear.

Sequentials on a3.. to go in a line next to the glamourous bit of plastic trunking on my patch of wall at Hadlow. Got rid of that boiling volcanic sky reflected in the pond. Looks a bit more cheery anyway. It made me think of a volcanic eruption, with a vaguely apocalyptic atmosphere. Nice! Not proper annotation, just junk text.

1:50 Plan. I feel like I've done this blasted thing 3 times now and I still don't really love it. No more time to do it again so here it is. Quite a relief to have to let go of it and move on.

The list is getting away on me! I really need something to take LESS time than I am allowing rather than more....A nice catch up piece please. Now.

Last one. 1:50 section for Design Development stage showing the shallow reflective toe dipping canal with pergola's either side, more arboretum style tree planting and some action in the central axial plaza. Now back to look at the List Of Doom to see what to do next.

Nearly there, in what feels like a section producing factory.... 1:50 scale section for the 1:200 Design Development stage showing the paddling stream, which I could really see bringing people in to the park in the summer, and for good measure Mark Zuckerberg and his mates having lunch, which I don't feel is quite so much of a draw.

Decided to go for a big double width 1:50 Section for the 'Design Development' stage where we look at the site at 1:200. I am trying to convery all the landform and swales across the site which are such a big part of the design. I'm really hoping I can print this as one big piece of paper. Maybe put two other sections above or a line of sequentials. Keep getting disracted by the view I've created outside for myself in the front garden. Loving my stonking big Euphorbia mellifera with the Cornus MF new leaves right now. Trying to feel the love and getting very sick of photoshop. That's not going to be getting better any time soon!

1:50 'Design Detail' sections. The first two at 1:50 with the opacity knocked back after feedback from the crit on Monday, the 2nd one is a 1:20 section showing the Falmouth Rd Entrance pergola.

Lots of work to do on my sketches. Just wireframes to work out what I should be looking at at the moment. Tricky in a way becasue my 1:50 site is essentially 2 paths and is almost all about people moving through the site on towards to parks main attractions elsewhere. Lots of work to do here on these too....

1:50 plan that was ready for yesterdays crit, only really had the base layer and annotation ready, with just a short time to try putting very realistic clone tool patches of the actual plants showing where they would be from above. Plus the water is a miserable effort. The sky it is reflecting looks like the boiling fumes of a volcanic erruption. The effec in the bottom right corner was all a bit much, and I ran out time to make the differing heights clearer. Feedback on previous plans was that they were too wishy washy, now too much. So back to the crit sheets and the list of doom we were given yesterday....

1:50 Section that went onto the sheet for yesterdays interim crit. This time in June. Tried to recreate the exact scene inlcluding the trees exactly as they would look, again after 10 years and what the matric planting on the right hand side have have in bloom inclduing alliums, glads and aquilegia's in the Sesleria. Tried this on with drawn in people, but since evething else is realistic, going to swap them for real people. feeback is to knock both sections back a bit.

1:50 Section looking west in Autumn. Really pleased with the colourful show of autumn tones in the design which are accruately represented, but get the feeling I'm going to be told to tone it down, or simplify it. I want it to be as vibrant as the planting, which is the main focus of my design really. Thinking about doing the other one as a line drawing at the moment so I can get feedback at Mondays crit and compare the two. One showing colour, the other structure.A usual leaving my decisions too late.

This is the 1:50 outline 'planometric', I believe Jamie called it. I probably would have called it 'random aerial view'. Supposed to be an axo, but that button didn't seem to jump out and hit me on the head at 3am. Doesn't have any of the planting included which will flow all around the back of the pond system, but gives the overall structure of the detailed hardscape and the trees. Below that is the second draft planting plan. Still needs bigger groupings and will now be looking to combine some plants together in mixed groups and spread it over two sheets. Wishing we had some more time to talk detailed planting with our tutor Julia Fogg, as it's the first time we've really been able to chew over a planting plan in any detail with her input. Love talking to people who know more about plants than me. Dull otherwise!

This has inspired me to think about underwater sculpture. Truly magical.

http://into-gardens.com/feature/underwater-gardening/?t=6

Back on the horse trying to catch up with my 1:200 stage now after a long cold that went right through the family (oh joy) and keep up with the 1:50 at the same time. Here is the first go at my 1:200 plan with annotation. Feedback from the tutorial today is: trees and shadows need to pop more, with punchier colours (my subtle and classy has been reduced to 'muddy' - pants!), key words in bold, I can use contour lines and spot heights to show the gentle land forms I envisage and the textures are a bit flat. Otherwise, I've been told, I'll have to wear khaki to the interview with the external examiners!

My final Masterplan A1 Sheets. Really happy with my design as a a masterplan. A point along a process towards a final detailed design. I now know I should have done the all the all night work sessions before the final crit. So I could get them all printed and see them on the wall, then you can see all the layout problems. I knew my masterplan was not shadowed enough and too busy, but ran out of time. Very dissappointed with the actual detail of my sections. Got completely stuck trying to do sections in autocad and all the detailed linework I had done was wasted. Had do do the linework in a panic by hand and it shows. The specified trees are carefully places to acurately reflect the parks, but the hand drawn design isn't really coming through. Could have been so easily a lot better. Annoation was all on one sheet, the plan and ended up more of an essay. Whoops. Agan not really that thrilled with my perspectives. Most of my energy went into working through the design itself and I just didn't leave myself enough time to represent it. Jamie always tells us we need to know how long things take. Well now I do.

Thematic Title thoughts......Snakes and ladders is A) Rubbish B) Foucssing on a visual device and C) Really rubbish. The scheme is based around transformation, and the planting river and the pergolas were my starting point and the river has now been made into a paddling and damming stream to replace the paddling pool in Dickens Square . Hmmm.....eddy, fluidity, fluid dynamics, downstream, current, flow, fluid,stream? Needs some thought and I want it to be echoed in some sort of graphic device.

These are the very rough perspectives I took to the final crit. Some of them look terrible because some of the shrub and plant groupings are still just lines on the ground, so the intended landscape character isn't shown. The planting rivers winding back and forth across the views in Newington Gardens for instance. The geometrical hedges are easier to just pull up, and where they are present, like in the first two views, I am fairly happy. They need a lot of fancy pantsing to finish. In some places the background of housing blocks needs more screening to avoice a visual 'jar' in the views and I think the entrances need more emphasis.

I took this version of the masterplan 1:500 of my Transformative scheme to the final crit on Monday. Have completely redesigned Dickens Square as at the interim crit I was told it didn't have enough landscape character. All those big scale crossing lines left me cold in the end and in the end I decided a strong axial design (thank you Le Notre) focusing on a cafe fronting plaza was would serve the area best. A community hub.Ran out of time for annotation, so had to hand write it in a flap in the morning, and with that little sleep, the spelling was pretty special! Only the base colours are applied at this stage, and with only the briefest of annotation I need to explain things like the river better. Also face the audience. I can never seem to manage that!

Design Resolution. Blurgh. It's murder. I spend all my time inhabiting my own visualisations. Drifting off to my parks when people are talking to me.......Deary me. This week I seem to be thinking in terms of Baroque axis, Modernist structures and as pretty much always everything Japanese, old and new. Design Freeze? Not yet!