20 articles for an amazing summer garden
Get ready for the best year in your garden ever!
What a phenomenal start to spring it’s been! Weeks of warming sunshine, the best displays of spring wildflowers I’ve known in years and the daffodils are relishing it too. Spring is undeniably here and while there may be colder nights, we’re too far into the year for seriously cold weather which means: all systems are grow people!
This week I thought it would be helpful to recap on articles relevant to this time of year to help get your garden set for the most flowerful summer possible. I’ve listed a bunch of free-to-access articles as well as lots of lessons from my £25/year wild garden design course - sign up today for full access to everything.
I’ve absolutely tonnes of new content planned for the rest of this year heading your way soon.
And a big thank you, Wild Way has just flown passed 6,000 subscribers and it’s been named as the 13th most popular Climate and Nature newsletter in the world and rising! What?! Wow! It’s good to know we can all make a difference with small actions for wildlife, that’s what the Wild Way is all about.
1) Let’s grow!
What to do this month
I can sum up what to do in April with one word: propagate. Get sowing, get dividing, start cuttings. But if you’d like to read more, check out my ideas for early spring.
10 essential tips for choosing plants for your garden
If you're thinking about new plants for your garden, as I am, my best advice to everyone is to follow the below steps to selecting plants as the professionals do.
21 projects for starting a wildlife garden
Wildlife is under ever increasing pressure and, if we’re honest with ourselves, things are going to get much worse for the natural world before it gets better. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature, the WWF, recently reported that on average wildlife populations around the world have
2) Think plants!
10 tough plants for early April joy
It’s a gloriously sunny start to April and there is a lot going on in our garden, demonstrated by the above area. I am insanely excited about it all - nothing’s perfect but there is progress. I’ll try and explain.
10 wildflowers to try growing in your garden
In my first book, Wild about Weeds, I detail over 50 wild plants recommended to grow in garden designs. Since then, I’ve been trialling many more and here I wanted to share ten of my favourites in addition to those listed in the book!
Primula vulgaris | primrose
Primroses are known by the botanical name Primula vulgaris, vulgaris meaning ‘commonly seen growing all over the place’. They are indigenous to Europe, north Africa and the caucasus.
Fritillaria meleagris | Snakeshead fritillary
One of the plants that sets gardens apart to my mind, is snakeshead fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris, with its curling stem and hanging chequered flower resembling an alert snake’s head. There’s something exciting and luxurious about seeing them, a moment of pure magic.
Cardamine pratensis | cuckoo flower
I’ve really got to know cuckoo flower since living in Yorkshire. They grow in the surrounding grasslands, popping up here and there from spring through to summer, flowering in beautiful shades of white to very pale pink. Their flowers glow in thick grass, held just high enough in the sward to be seen.
3) Design for the future
How to plan a contemporary border with matrix planting design
Garden borders used to follow a strict framework of small plants at the front, medium in the middle, large at the back. It’s not a bad idea, this allows you to see more plants from the front. However, it’s not particularly natural in its look or structure and I’ve always wanted more from gardens, so I mix things up using matrix design.
Garden appraisal checklist
As an experienced landscape designer, I’ve appraised gardens all over the UK to assess them before planning any changes, including our own garden. Follow my advice below for assessing your outdoor space with a site appraisal and it will give you the foundation to make the right decisions for everything in the future, from planting, food, landscaping, personal use and importantly, wildlife.
Design concepts (part one): scribble design
Conceptualising a garden design is the first stage in coming up with ideas for an outdoor space.
How to understand plant vigour
If there’s one thing I think the gardening world has missed in educating gardeners over the centuries, it’s plant vigour. Without understanding vigour, it’s no wonder gardeners struggle with balancing long term permaculture planting and maintenance.
Mixing shade and sun plants
The very small garden of this stylish new build by Gagarin architects in the grounds of a stunning mill conversion had multiple challenges to design around. Sitting on the top of a hill in the Pennines it is exposed to the strongest winds the UK can throw at us, is overlooked by apartments opposite and while it can be baked by direct sun in the morning, is in full shade the rest of the day.
How to establish permanent wildflower plantings
You don’t need a meadow to grow wildflowers, I dot them in our garden borders among cultivated plants. By their nature, most wildflowers are easy plants - they grow where they grow because they like and evolved in exactly those conditions. Once established, they tend to look after themselves but establishing wildflowers in the first place isn’t always straightforward. Here I’ll share some tips and tricks I’ve learnt over the years for starting wildflowers in your garden.
4) Perennial edibles are all the rage!
Permanent edible planting (part one)
When we moved to our farm in Yorkshire we inherited a number of forest garden areas from the previous owners. The smallholding has a long history of permaculture, growing permanent food crops. Before moving, over the previous decade I’d been experimenting with forest gardening and permaculture techniques in most of my garden designs and on my old allotment. For the last five years I’ve let these experiments run absolutely wild on our farm and this year I’m going to start introducing you to more of them.
How to plant and grow hazelnuts
On our allotment I’ve started one of a few new areas on our farm for 2025, a little hazel nuttery with three cobnut bushes. We have other areas of wild hazelnuts on the farm, but I wanted to optimise yield with a careful new selection.
5) Wildlife balance
16 ways gardeners can live alongside slugs and snails
I’ve always felt sorry for slugs and snails, they move around slowly, minding their own business. Gently nibbling plants peacefully. And then along we come to spoil their day. Well, a few years ago I said to myself ‘no more’ they stay and I’ll find new ways to live alongside them. Below I’ve shared what these are...
Ponds in garden ecosystems
Over 50% of ponds in the UK have vanished in the last fifty years according to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
And most important of all, of course, is to just go outside and have fun! You don’t actually have to do anything at all.
