JOHN Carmichael is bidding for glory at the Chelsea Flower Show after winning £10,000 backing from regional development agency One NorthEast.
His first attempt to design a garden for the event passed the rigorous inspection of Royal Horticultural Society judges who have awarded his Islay Courtyard Garden a place in this year's show.
Mr Carmichael, a director at Landscape Management Services, in Killingworth, North Tyneside, is more used to working on plans for new housing estates than intimate gardens.
The One NorthEast funding will enable him to buy materials needed to recreate the stark beauty of the Hebridean island that his family come from.
When the garden is put together at the flower show in May, it will contain peat cut from bogs on the island, Islay stone and overturned whisky bottles from one of the island's distilleries set into the ground.
The centrepiece of the garden is a stone Celtic cross which is being made at Hexham.
Mr Carmichael said: "My family come from Islay, I love the place and I thought it was the perfect place to focus my garden on.
"The money from One NorthEast was the difference between us going to the show or not."
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