The New Romantic Garden - it's Publication Day!
Why I wrote it, and an extract
The bottom line is that I do not want anyone to be thinking “that bloody garden designer” five years later
The New Romantic Garden is out today!
I’ve been wanting to write this book for a long time. There are plenty of ‘how to design your garden’ books out there, some good, but I’ve always found that whilst these might explain about how to measure a garden and how to draw lines, they miss the whole point of creating a garden and end up instead showing us a series of soulless outdoor rooms, with nothing for the person who wants to actually love their garden, who wants to create a haven which feels magical. For if someone says your garden is magical, isn’t that the very best compliment you can receive?1
That’s the book I wanted to write
It needed to be more than a coffee table book, and more than a manual. I wanted readers to be able to ‘take away’ elements and ideas from each chapter.
Quite early on, I realised I’d set myself a hard challenge: to write a book which really gets under the skin of what makes a successful garden, and the more I thought about it and looked at the way I work, the more I realised that this is something that isn’t in books or taught in design schools. That getting to know the garden, working with the garden’s custodian to create something that will stand the test of time, something magical, something that will bring as much pleasure to visitors as it will to the garden owner.
I realised all of this was about a kind of romance.
And so it was that I set about trying to grasp this intangible, pulling the threads of the ideas together and explaining how each element comes together to create a garden.
Designing a garden is far more than drawing a square on a piece of paper and then choosing materials and a few plants. It’s about YOU. As we’ve been chatting about here in the small garden design course, it’s about soul, personality, intelligence. Unpicking everything that goes towards making a garden: the garden itself, the location, the client, Nature, the Wheel of the Year and the seasons, a thoughtful approach - all of these wrapped together aren’t in any of the garden design manuals. So I decided to put them together.
I’m really grateful for these early reviews: please, if you have a moment, if you are enjoying the book, would you mind popping a review wherever you bought it online? This really helps. And even if you didn’t buy it online, a review on a bookseller’s website is gratefully received. THANK YOU.
“The New Romantic Garden is transportingly lovely. Many of her gardens remind me of unlaced bodices and flushed cheeks and a sort of abandoned dishevelment - they’re frothy and loose and full of roses - just divine. …..Highly recommend - not just as a visual treat but because, like her newsletter, it is full of tips and truly inspirational.” “Jo is the absolute queen of creating lush, rose-filled gardens in colour combinations that make you swoon. This wonderful book tells you exactly how to create the Jo Thompson look and I love it”RHS The Garden: “It will compel generations of gardeners to think more clearly about their own connection to the gardening world.”
Financial Times: “Her book is filled with soft and feminine planting, across lavish herbaceous borders, and in flowers emerging in billowing meadows. Yet she is also able to create a sense of romance and escapism in an urban garden.”
“There’s a lot to be said for simply sharing a cup of tea over these initial discussions. I’m still having cups of tea decades later with some garden owners; the conversation continues as the garden grows and changes, and from this process emerges friendship, such a hard thing to pin down. Excited chats and sometimes head-scratching puzzling over an ailing plant that really should have worked according to my experience, plant trials studied, books read, and experts consulted. Because let’s face it, sometimes plants simply don’t like where we stick them. A garden is never going to stay static, and the conversation of trust that comes out of honesty is a long one as we observe watching the changes, the zooming forwards and the hesitations as the garden is hit by a random extreme weather variation, and the following recovery.
And that cup of tea is where it all starts. We get to know each other, and I get to understand what is required of the garden, but more vitally than that, I get to know the garden’s owner. I can test out ideas and gauge the responses, and whilst I can gently push a solution, illustrating it in picture and word, I’m never going to force it if it doesn’t sit well. The bottom line is that I do not want anyone to be thinking “that bloody garden designer” five years later when they look at an area they just knew they’d never like or use but which I’d convinced them to put in. Gardens borne out of a basis of an emerging friendship are satisfying places.”
“Gardens borne out of a basis of an emerging friendship are satisfying places.” This is why I can’t wait to read your new book Jo. Congratulations.
This book has come at exactly the right time for me, I cannot wait for it to arrive. As a new empty nester, I am transitioning my garden to my realise my planting fantasies, to build and have built bucket list projects and to create spaces to relax, harvest, read, snooze, romance, nurture, socialise and dream.
On these chilly nights by a hot fire, I cannot wait for page turning loveliness.
By day, when mundane tasks and commutes loom, I am looking forward to pondering on tips and the advice and constructing lush multi season flower palaces for my new spaces.
When I have read and digested my first gardening book in years... I will be back with my thoughts. If it's as thoughtful and quality laden as your Substack edits, I won't be disappointed.