Family ties play a big role in Charlie Albone’s design for the Chelsea Flower Show. Source: Supplied

Earlier this year, Albone was approached to head to the UK and help an Australian team build a garden for a well-known English celebrity, giving Albone an exceptional amount of experience and the confidence to enter his own application for the prestigious show.

CHOOSING THE BEST PLANTS FOR YOUR GARDEN

“It’s a huge application process and finding the funding is a huge part of the process. I applied and was lucky enough to be one the people to be selected to go,” Albone said.

Albone will spend the next five months designing, coordinating and building his garden in the hopes of following previous Australian winners and taking out the Best in Show award at the 2015 show in May.

Charlie Albone juggles his time with his family and Selling Houses Australia commitments and is now preparing an entry for the Chelsea Flower Show. Source: News Limited

In 2013 the Best in Show award was won by Australian landscaper Phillip Johnson while many other Australian landscapers and designers have won gold medals and silver gilts in their categories over the past 10 years, including Jamie Durie and Jason Hodges.

Albone’s garden will be judged against his own brief. He will also be up for the Best in Show category and his garden will have the opportunity to be judged and previewed by members of the royal family.

Already well on its way, the garden has been designed with Albone’s deceased father firmly in mind.

“The design is very emotional for me because my father passed away when I was 17,” he said.

“I designed the garden with the idea that if I was ever to meet him and tell him about my life as a man — he only knew me as a boy — I wanted to have a place to meet him.”

Albone has already started preparing his entry for the Chelsea Flower Show. Source: Supplied

The garden is divided into three sections, the first of which celebrates life featuring a wide, 2m path that Albone would be able to walk down with his father and two children.

The second section will have a water feature with a water level that will drop out within three seconds, emulating the feeling one gets when they lose a loved one.

The third section is a sunken area where there will be a fire pit and stone pillars.

“That’s a space to sit around and talk about life and tell my dad a bit about my life,” Albone said.

The garden will feature some Australian touches with sandstone sourced from the Capricorn Sandstone Quarries and shipped to the UK.

“I feel that landscape design has moved on quite a lot in Australia, it’s gone from being very practical based to trying to create an emotional space and sandstone has got so much character to it, that’s why I am using it,” Albone said.

Albone kept his late father firmly in mind when drawing up designs for his entry in the Chelsea Flower Show. Source: Supplied

There will also be a range of plants and flowers that thrive well in Sydney featured in the design.

“The majority of the plants are plants that do well in the Sydney region but ones that Europeans may not expect to see over here,” Albone said.

“For example we have an English oak hedge, Zelkova and Parrottia trees, rounded buxus balls, foxgloves and Delphiniums.”

“We are also featuring some Australia natives in the form of Acacia ‘Limelight’, Dicksonia tree ferns, native gingers, native violets, Poa grass and Scleranthus,” he said.

Currently Albone has someone growing some of the required plants for him in the UK, while many other materials and tools will be shipped over.

As opposed to the usual Australian entrant sponsor, Fleming’s Nurseries, Albone has found two of his own sponsors, Gardena and Husqvarna.

Albone said the competition would be between himself, a number of European entrants and an entrant from Dubai.

He will be taking a team of 10 with him to the UK, including landscapers, builders and a lucky student who will be selected from a design competition being run through the Australian Institute of Landscape Designers and Managers.

Albone is husband to interior designer Juliet Love and father of sons Leo, 2, and Hartford, 4 weeks and runs his own landscape design company, Inspired Exteriors.