Hello! Elliott from theGardeningKind here. This little bit is all about me…
For 20 years, I worked as a freelance wildlife photographer, author, and safari guide, but gardening has become such an overwhelming passion, I am now making the transition to garden photography and gardening content creator via Instagram and YouTube.
Although I've only been gardening seriously for about seven years, I am a very fast learner and, once I get my teeth into something, I’m a voracious reader and researcher. But I learn best by doing! And so my gardens have become my school where experimentation, trial and (lots of) error are all encouraged.
I've been inspired by so many gardens and gardeners, such is the accessibility to a world of gardening these day. I can't say who's influenced me the most. The traditionalist in me was truly inspired by Monty Don. During the depths of my depressive episodes, I clung to his 'The Complete Gardener' book when I shut myself away, fervently taking notes and clinging to the hope of Spring and better times. What I enjoyed most was the wholesome holistic approach where pleasure in the process is key, pests and weeds come and go, but it's the pleasure in the everyday.
The contrarian in me follows Charles Dowding - a man that rightly challenges garden dogma and whom truly transformed my gardening with the no dig (minimal soil disturbance) approach. Then there's Fergus Garrett, Head Gardener at Great Dixter. Visiting that garden filled me with so much joy and inspiration and I know Christo had a major influence overall, but it's the garden... the only garden where I felt at home. Instantly at home.
In my garden, I only use peat-free compost. I never use pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, or synthetic fertiliser. I believe in no-dig, feeding soil life, mulching, composting, and organic wildlife friendly gardening.
I actively encourage nature into my garden. I plant for pollinators, making sure I have a variety of flower forms with the garden as whole enjoying a long flowering season. I encourage the birdlife with a little food, clean bird baths and nest boxes. There are always log piles and cover for insects and other invertebrates. And not forgetting the Embankment! 40metres of bank, left wild and weedy with nettles, alkanet, sorrel, wild primrose, herb Robert and is home to solitary bees, bank voles, and frogs.
From the outset, being a professional wildlife photographer and having a keen interest in nature, it was crucial that the gardens we created were wildlife friendly. From a gardening perspective alone, it has been a huge success. Nature has found its own happy balance in the garden.
Blackbirds, thrushes, frogs, and ground beetles predate on slugs and snails so efficiently that they seem almost absent. Aphids arrive but are quickly mopped up by ladybirds, lacewing larvae, hoverflies, wrens, blue tits, and a host of other predators. I've even made a couple of new gardening friends in Bobbin and Bobette, our resident robins. They follow me around the garden and will happily eat from my hand.
About the garden
The 1/3rd acre (1,200mm²) garden is a triangular plot, north-facing, and on a slope, with a steep embankment at the southernmost boundary. The soil is alkaline and varies depth from a few centimetres to half a metre. This sits on an Alkali substrate - a strongly alkaline clay. With years of mulching, the quality of the soil has improved dramatically and in many areas is a beautiful, dark crumbly loam. Climate-wise, we’re in a temperate oceanic climate USDA zone 8b equivalent, but with less rainfall as we're on the north-side of a hill and nestled under its rain shadow.
Collectively, the gardens form a C-shape around our country cottage, which was built in the 1650s. From the overgrown, ivy-covered, bramble infested neglected space we inherited upon moving in, we’ve created several distinct garden rooms:
- The Courtyard Garden also known as the White Garden. This is a small container garden in a south-facing sun-trap with small trees, roses, evergreens, and herbaceous planting all in whites, green, grey-green, and glaucous. There are over 40 vintage galvanised buckets, boilers, baths, tanks, troughs, and dolly tubs.
- The Kitchen Garden is comprised of six timber raised-beds for vegetables and an adjacent cutting garden. Also home to four composting bays. The growing area for vegetables is 27m² or 290ft². Originally with wood chip pathways, these were replaced with gravel paths in 2023. The next stage will be to add a greenhouse, fruit trees and a walk-in fruit cage.
- The Terrace Garden was originally built in 2016, with sandstone paving above a 1m high retaining wall. There is now a huge collection of beautiful vintage pots and planters, specimen Japanese Maples, English shrub roses, buxus topiary, and seasonal planting. This is also home to a shade garden called "Shady Table" - a purpose-built stage for hostas, ferns, and Japanese forest grass.
- The Flower Garden is a triumph of no-dig (minimal soil disturbance). The plants were planted directly into an existing lawn in January 2021. Each plant was given a dose of Empathy's Mycorrhizal rootgrow™ and a generic Fish-Blood-Bonemeal. The plants were then mulched with cardboard and peat-free compost. No further nutrition has been added. Four summers on and the planting is huge, romantic, blousy, and luxuriant, but above all healthy! Roses take centre stage, with Irish yew, cherry trees, and masses of herbaceous perennials.
Courtyard Garden
Cottage Garden
Kitchen Garden
Terrace Garden
