If you couldn’t make today’s Substack live1, this is what it was all about:
MY NEW BOOK!!!
My new book, The New Romantic Garden, will be published in February 2025 by Rizzoli. I can’t begin to tell just how much this book means to me - it’s my third, and probably the one that has required the most soul-searching as I dive into what it is that gives a garden its soul.
In it, I unpick the process of creating gardens for the spaces they inhabit, for their custodians, for the trees and plants that populate them. There are plenty of rabbit holes that I manage to find my way down too: for example, when you read in the blurb that “Thompson reminds us that we are never, in complete charge of how our gardens grow; other forces are always at work”, they’re talking about the fairies that I suspect are responsible for nicking my secateurs……
One of the most satisfying bits to me is the title itself: as a lifelong superfan of Duran Duran, I love the fact that somehow I’ve managed to sneak a nod to them into the title.
I hope you enjoyed this evening’s Live from my gusty garden: I’m considering making it a regular-ish feature to tie in with Show Us Your Plots - which takes place all day on Sunday on the Chat. I’ll do occasional Sundays, starting this Sunday 22nd September. I’m going to try to experiment with alternate times so that our Gardening Minds in different time zones will be able to join in - as with all experiments here on TGM, I’ll play about with the timings and see if this arrangement works - and if it doesn’t, we can try something different.
I’ll kick off this Sunday at 9am UK time, and we’ll take it from there.
By the way, I switched the ‘notify subscribers by email’ that the Live was going to start - is this annoying or helpful? I guess if you have your email notifications off, then it doesn’t really matter. But I’d love to know.
And I’d love to know what you think about Substack having a live feature? I think it’s great as it means I can stay on one platform… who knows, I might even FINALLY resurrect the 8am Dog Walk.
I only gave 20 minutes’ notice so you probably missed it…
This is great news!!!! I can’t wait to buy a copy. Such excitement, congratulations Jo. All my GM emails are being directed away from my primary box, so I’m glad I spotted the tip off on Instagram. I think gmail is editing my life to make it as boring as possible.
Can’t wait for February! Fairies- I’ve always wondered who’s been nicking mine!
So sorry to not have got to the Live show. Next time! 🌺🌼🌸