Charlie Dimmock and the Chinese pool?

Harviglass were recently selected by BBC Television for Charlie Dimmock's TV series, 'Charlie's Garden Army'. The company was asked to create a glassfibre pool 8.5 meters (30ft) long, that would become the focal point of a Chinese garden. Charlie set out to design an ethnic garden from what was a pretty bleak central courtyard of an apartment block for the elderly Chinese in the centre of Manchester's China Town

Restricted access to the courtyard meant that the pool had to be created on site. It was constructed by direct application of glass fibre laminate to a specially designed substrate of polyurethane foam and specially treated timber.

Time was important to meet the BBC's filming schedule, but Manchester's well earned notoriety for rain twice delayed the job. It was vital that the surfaces to be lined with GRP were completely dry. This situation produced some humorous exchanges between Charlie and John Hargreaves, managing director of Harviglass.

At the third attempt, the work was completed inside the producer's schedule and was filmed in detail as work progressed. Harviglass personnel went on to assist with gardening and building tasks under the direction of Charlie who strangely, had little difficulty in finding willing volunteers from among the men!

As a company with a long standing tradition of problem solving in difficult situations, Harviglass was proud to be selected by the BBC for this project. As their more usual work is in high quality mouldings for the automotive, architectural safety, shopfitting, retail, medical and scientific industries, this project was a challenge but also a welcome break. Charlie Dimmock was a delight to work with and the company hopes the pool and garden will give years of peaceful pleasure to the residents.