What kind of photographer? The gardening kind, of course.

Elliott here! A big hello from a gardening photographer

It must be said, I’ve always loved the outdoors! I’ve always loved nature! When I reached primary school age, I was allowed to explore the neighbourhood. My folks meant the cul-de-sac, but I had other ideas. There was a vast woodland just a short walk from the family home which felt like a wilderness at the edge of the world. Wild! Like Fangorn!

I’d walk along the little brook, reach the busy road, carefully look both ways and cross over. I’d enter through a scruffy hedgerow, along a well worn path. It was one of those peculiarly dense woods that somehow managed to deaden the sound of the busy world rushing past. Just a few paces in, it felt like twilight and all you could hear was the rustle of wind through the treetops and a few chattering birds. Perhaps the odd grey squirrel ‘kucking and quaaring.’ Colossal gnarly oaks and mighty beech stood amongst rather ghostly silver birch.

With over 750 acres to call my playground, I would be in there exploring whenever I could. It wasn’t a place for cops and robbers, warfare or make-believe violence of any kind. It was my place and I was almost always alone. I’ve always enjoyed my own company. It was a place that was very peaceful. A place where I could climb trees and turn over mushrooms to look at their gills. A place to wander off the path, find myself in a thicket of brambles, have a major panic attack, and find my way back again without admitting how terrified I was.

A place where I could take a packed lunch in a small dark blue C&A rucksack with a pencil, paper, compass, penknife, and enjoy a warm squidgy, clingfilm-wrapped sarny, a misshapen carton of juice (without a straw because they always fell) and a packet of crisps. The best bit by far! Walkers cheese and onion stuffed in the sarny. Pickled onion Monster Munch that made the back of your mouth sizzle. Or those Smith’s crisps with their own stamp-size blue sachet of salt. Of course, being the crisp connoisseur I was, I knew just how much to add (ummm, all of it… rolls eyes)

Nature and Gardens have always been friends to me. Friends that go hand in hand, with occasional spats and quarrels, but they always make up, besties again. My Great Grandmother was a hugely passionate gardener with a seemingly magical garden. Great Nanny Powell was tiny, but strong as an ox, with a vice-like grip that clamped sharply around your arm, should you stray onto her borders… She left more than one impression! Oh, utterly ruthless to snails!

At home, I had a little garden of my own. A small semicircular brick-built raised bed. There were cushioning mounds of aubretia, lobelia, saxifrage, and alyssum. A collection of rocks and quartz crystals from my forays into Welsh slate mines. A little pond and resident frog next to the dwarf conifer… Well, it was the 80s!

My grandmother, also a passionate gardener on a fog-bound Welsh mountainside, joked that “Gardening is in your genes… it just skipped your father!” I found this highly amusing because my father is not a gardener. He freely admits he does what he’s told, sometimes with a smile, often not. He won’t mind me saying that he sees gardening as chores to add to the already expansive ‘to do’ list. They just happen to be outside. He loves the tools though. I mean, he really loves the tools!

It still makes me smile, because gardening has come very easily to me, practically instinctive. I enjoy the entire process, whereas dear old Dad, like so many, sees ‘a job’ that’s rather begrudgingly completed, with an emphatic Tick! Although, he’s much better these days, thanks to a guiding hand from yours truly.

He’ll pop over and help me with those larger ‘jobs’ that can be rather miserable unless you have distraction and banter! In exchange, we enjoy a proper pub lunch with a pint and have an hour or so to put the world to rights. I am also the designated phone support for my family’s gardening endeavours where I get to enjoy hearing various plant names along with “Will that work?”

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it seems appropriate. When you meet someone for the first time and share a common interest or bond, you reminisce! I haven’t a clue what football team won what or when, but I do know gardening. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a dusting of nostalgia and donning a pair of rose-tinted bespectacled memories. If I hadn’t written these words, I probably wouldn’t have just felt those warm fuzzies, thinking about my squidgy sandwiches.

But I have a confession. Two actually.

First, I didn’t always eat the sandwiches. Sometimes, they were just too squidgy, so I brought them home. Ashamed to admit that they were uneaten, I felt it better to toss them out of my bedroom window into the monstrous Pampas Grass below.

It made sense at the time.

Cunningly, I thought, they would slowly decompose and no one would be any the wiser for my misdemeanour… That was until my father kept mentioning ‘an odd smell’ in the front garden and decided to cut down the pampas, discovering my secret cache of mummified mouldy sarnies in the process. Damn you clingfilm!

Second confession, I am a bit wordy. Potentially verbose. So, I apologise now. What can I say? I like detail. If you do me the great honour of subscribing, you will receive plenty of detail and it’s yours to do with as you wish! After all, that is the reason why I am here on Substack.

As much as I love Instagram, every one of my 60k followers and the fabulous gardening community at large, 2,200 characters just isn’t enough space for me. I have learned to keep things relatively concise, albeit with many time-consuming revisions in my Notes app before publishing. It’s just that so many gardening subjects need real heft and depth. They do. Bullet points just won’t cut it.

So, I started a blog. A basic blog, but a beautifully presented blog. I am a professional photographer and do take pride in my presentation and imagery. Unfortunately, the blog is so basic, there is no subscribe function. Caught in a dilemma, a few fellow grammers (

JP Clark

,

Gareth

,

Sophie van Gerwen

) began mentioning Substack and how it is the near perfect delivery system for blogs, dispatching them direct to a reader’s inbox. No third party list or app.

And that, my newly acquainted gardening chums, really appeals!

What can you expect from me on Substack? Well, there will be plenty of illustrated ‘How to…’ gardening features. Lots of practical tips and advice, seasonal jobs, gardening organically, how I go about creating and maintaining my own no-dig gardens, all mingled with success, failure, and hard learned lessons.

In fact, I will be sharing absolutely everything I’ve come to learn about gardening. All the information I’ve consumed over the years. All the experience from my gardens. All repackaged with my own brand of photography and a slightly whimsical slant.

There will be a fortnightly edition, posted just in time for the weekend, with larger subjects broken down into more easily digestible portions. (I am now thinking of cake, sorry) There will be paid subscriptions at some point, but for now, I am just here to share and to find out whether anyone else really likes what I am sharing!

My ears are open to any suggestions.

As we’re diving headlong into September (it’s too early to use the a-word), the first epic subject on my mind is BULBS! Spring-flowering bulbs to be more precise. Planted in aut… (nope) planted around this time of year, for desperately needed colourful blooms in late winter and spring. How does that sound?

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