The New Romantic Garden
A sneak preview of my new book on garden design
When the light is at its most fleeting and everything has stopped, it’s winter solstice. A time to balance out the exuberance of the summer equinox, a time when the garden seems to sleep
It’s Christmas-time. Substack has surpassed itself with gift lists (here’s The Gardening Mind’s) and ideas for decorating and for cooking, and carols are in the air and I love every minute. When they’re saying goodbye to you, people pop a ‘Merry Christmas’ at the end. I love that. Some people are wearing silly hats: today I saw an elderly lady sporting a pair of sparkly reindeer antlers and I made a note to self. There’s generally a lot of glitter and sparkles around, and I think there should be more. I reckon sparkly clothes shouldn’t just be for Christmas, they should be for life.
Inside, the amaryllis is bustin’ out all over and the dog is keeping a very close eye on the increased number of delivery drivers; outside, my garden is a mudbath as every window in my house has been replaced over the last week, and the lawn, the only route for my brilliant builders, now has a black strip of mud slicing across its entirety. Who knows what the bulb meadow area will look like in the spring? - there isn’t much grass left there, that’s for certain. BUT I AM NOT going to think about that until it’s time to sow grass seed, and in the spirit of wishing we all behaved as if it were Christmas every day, I‘m looking on the bright side and viewing this muddy battlefield as an opportunity. Up until now, this longer grass has kind of created itself in terms of species - come March, I’m thinking I might sow some wildflower seed there. Watch this space.
Have you signed up to The Gardening Mind yet? Free subscribers will be able to preview the first few items here, and paid subscribers will be able to see the full article every week, including: the to-do list, solutions to your gardening challenges, the small garden design course, planting ideas, gardeners’ question times, and more. Paid subscribers will also have exclusive access to the weekly Show Us Your Plots which is our regular get-together on the Chat, where we share ideas and solve problems throughout the week. A subscription is £1.50 per week if you sign up for the yearly plan - see it as a garden investment, as you’ll have loads of ideas by the end of each read.
In the design studio, there’s the usual pre-Christmas drive to get things ‘done’ before the holiday: there’s a feeling of a kind of housekeeping, of clearing everything up to be ready and fresh and bright for new growth next year. Every year, the urge to do this comes just before the winter solstice, and that’s next Saturday, When the light is at its most fleeting and everything has stopped, it’s winter solstice. A time to balance out the exuberance of the summer equinox, a time when the garden seems to sleep.
My new book, The New Romantic Garden, follows this cycle of the year with its solstices and equinoxes - we’re never in complete charge of how our gardens grow; other forces are always at work, as they should be when we allow sustainable practices to help us guide rather than try to dominate nature’s own efforts.
Book launch and talk dates are being arranged as I write, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to meet lots of you at events in the UK and the US over the next year.
I’m really excited to be able to share this preview with you:
Gardens borne out of a basis of an emerging friendship are satisfying places