WHEN writing on country matters for this newspaper, you don't often come across the phrase 'chic to chic'. More like sheep to sheep or maybe chicken to chicken.

But into the grand maelstrom of country life steps garden designer Lindsay Stanton from Bromsgrove with her first ever effort at Malvern Spring Gardening Show in a week's time.

OK, so her garden is what she calls 'low maintenance urban chic', but the event is being held on the Three Counties Showground with the glorious backdrop of the Malvern Hills and you don't get more country than that.

When producing show gardens for the Royal Horticultural Society judges, you have to title them, that's where Chic to Chic comes in. Others among the 15 entries have the more straightforward The Stonemarket Courtyard Garden, The Garden of Meditation or A Garden Hideaway.

For a woman who studied English and history at university, this is a whole different take on life.

Although an A-Level in art that preceded 'uni' gave an inkling of her art and design talent.

"I'd always liked gardening and I just wanted to do something different from working in an office," she said.

So she took a course with the England Garden Scheme for a grounding in the complexities of garden design and this launched her new career.

That was 12 years ago and since then her work has been much and varied.

"I've designed suburban gardens, country gardens, school gardens, but I think the most unusual so far was a restaurant garden," she said. "Living in north Worcestershire, I have done quite a bit of work in the Black Country where you can have quite steep gardens. Some of them are almost vertical. You go out of the back of a house to be faced by this wall of garden.

"One of the ways of tackling it is by creating a series of terraces and if you make a path it needs to be windy with shallow steps."

Of course none of these problems applied when Lindsay set out to design her show garden for Malvern.

"It's an event I love and have been to as a visitor for many years," she added. "When I applied to enter a show garden and was accepted I was thrilled."

Lindsay's garden is being built by landscaper Steven Bubb, who runs English Country Gardens at Clent.

"The emphasis is on quality," she explained. "Although it could be described as low budget and low maintenance, it will cost around £2,000 to build."

It will take about four days to put together, but when the Garden Show ends on Sunday, May 15, it will all be taken up again.