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New Year inspiration for your garden
It’s the perfect moment for a spot of armchair gardening. Arthur Parkinson reveals where to find ideas and tips for the coming year online
don’t like New Year’s resolutions very much; better and less pressurising is to give yourself an ample supply of daily inspiration. I find that the best way to get a fix of this is by way of the addiction that is Instagram. This, for me, is my personal magazine; it’s a platform where we can inspire one another, as long as we can limit our time on it.
Certainly a resolution I will be aiming to achieve is to stop “doomscrolling”, something that is all too easily done, especially over these months of grey winter skies. Leaving the phone at home when possible and charging it downstairs overnight might seem like mere whimsical suggestions, but such actions will see your screen time drop, sometimes surprisingly. Your phone-focused neck and eyes will be grateful too. When I am looking at my Instagram feed, I want a combination of beautiful photos and descriptive captions, especially when it comes to garden photography.
In general, a main resolution of mine this coming year is to enjoy the garden more as a place of sanctuary rather than treating it like a flower show. To ensure that I achieve this, I’m turning my growing attention to more perennials and shrubs to give my garden a constant backbone to rely on, with plenty of scent and flavours. When I first started gardening I didn’t give much attention to herbs, but now they are often top of my planting list because they are very happy in pots. The thing that gave me the most enjoyment last year was in fact adding a bird bath: a simple large plant saucer placed on our garden table, which was then
Thanks to Riverford’s account, I know we’re facing a cauliflower shortage this year
treated like a spa by the robins and blue tits. And if you haven’t got one strung up already, then I passionately recommend a clothes line for your summer laundry drying in 2024 – it’s a no-brainer.
If you want to indulge in some armchair gardening before the new year activity begins, here are some of my favourite Instagram accounts that might inspire you to make some resolutions for the year ahead. Elevate your veg
For stately veg, try @_glennfacer, veg and fruit grower at Chatsworth. The kitchen garden at Chatsworth was put into growing motion long before many other stately homes began following suit, back in the 1980s, thanks to an idea of two of the Mitford sisters, Deborah and Pamela. Today, the garden’s central raised brick beds, exclamation-marked with apple trees, are largely under the charge of Glenn, whose fascinating account gives insights into its edibles, from passion-flower fruits and carpets of nasturtiums to forcing rhubarb and sea kale: the resulting harvests supply the Derbyshire estate’s farm shops as well as the Devonshires’ personal kitchen. Despite its period drama foil of a location, Glenn will inspire those with a county pile and those with an urban allotment plot alike. His colleague, Ian Bell (@28ianbell), who looks after the Chatsworth glasshouse, will have you lusting after Imperial lemon, which makes for the finest of marmalades, and I’m in awe of the efforts he takes to grow the famed Muscat grapes.
Elsewhere, thanks to the insightful reels from @riverford, I now know that this winter the nation is facing a cauliflower shortage due to the wet weather. With over 40 individual organic farmers supplying the Riverford organic veg box scheme, their Instagram feed is engaging and thought-provoking about what British growers are going through to feed us all. On a more artisan but still very productive scale is @jez_taylor_ market_gardening. Jez is head of the market garden at Daylesford in the Cotswolds, and he and his team harvest and grow impressive daily quantities of veg, fruit, herbs and cut flowers for the iconic Daylesford Organic farm shops and pubs. Be sure to take note of the varieties featured, as it is taste and also resistance to pests that rule supreme in what is being grown here.
Finally, for an allotment diary, follow @ phils_allotment_garden. I love the freedom of ramshackleness that allotments give – they’re a lot less stressful to manage when it comes to appearance than gardens are. Personally, I like to follow Phil because he is based in my home town of Hucknall, but he also
offers a fascinating insight into the trials, triumphs and culture of allotment plot life.
Introduce more colour, whatever the size of your garden
For garden flamboyance, @cotonmanorgarden is where Alice in Wonderland meets the esteemed aspects of an English country house garden, with its lawns, herbaceous borders and abundant roses. These garden stalwarts can easily look too stiff, but there is no danger of that happening here – if you look up from the many combinations of florals, you may spot a rooting Kunekune pig over the fence, or be astounded by blood-orange flamingos completely free-ranging and looking especially resplendent against a backdrop of latespring oriental poppies or autumn redhot pokers. This is a refreshing, fly-on-the-wall account of a very busy garden that is both a personal home and a popular garden to visit. Its season starts with a flush of snowdrops and hellebores, and endless propagation of cuttings and seed-sowing, which will give you a reminder to do the same at home. By summer, the place is grandly awash with planted pots, an inspiration to those with gardens both large and small.
Become an expert on your favourite flowers
For dahlia growing, follow @justdahlias. The dahlia continues to be one of the most in-vogue of flowers, with so many varieties now to suit every taste. Growing them with success, however, does require some reading up, especially about their tubers, and how to feed and stake them. This account, with its many helpful videos of how to grow them both in the ground and in pots, will ensure that your show of dahlias is a triumph.
Sweet peas are the must-grow cut flower for perfume and harvests, but how to grow them is often a very personal choice. For me, it’s autumn sowing into root trainers and as much good muck as I can find for them when it comes to planting them out. But it’s a different ball game for professional growers, and one of the most esteemed is @roger_parsons_sweet_peas.
Make the most of what you grow
For cut flowers, take a look at the way @ sean_anthony_pritchard arranges them. I always prefer the appearance of flowers plonked nicely in water to that of fussy, painstaking arrangements, and Sean’s account depicting home-grown harvests in an array of vessels through the year will encourage you to bring the garden into the house more and more as seasonal riches peak in their growth.
For the good life, follow @the_seasonal_table. I am already regretting not following Tom and Kathy’s advice of making rose-hip syrup, which they create from the hips they gather up from the hedgerows around their smallholding in rural Somerset. You can subscribe to their very generous newsletter, which is packed full of seasonal recipes.
Bring in cottagegarden elements
Francine Raymond (@francinehens) has written several helpful books about her experience of keeping hens. Her account is an insight into her graceful garden in Whitstable, with its smile-inducing painted hen house, frequented by a pair of dear bantam hens. They live within a curious and wonderful world of planted pots, a wildflower-festooned meadow and many welcome self-seeders within the garden paths. The appearances of contented cats and towering giant fennel completes this Beatrix Potter-worthy account of the kind of garden that many of us dream of cultivating.
Put some thought into fencing
The wise gardener @jaydaveywillow has a unique skill in willow fencing, and will give much food for thought when it comes to fences. Woven willow often proves to be the most attractive of this garden wallpapering, and no one does this sustainable weaving better than Jay. His account shows his skills in gardens of both town and countryside, helping to conceal unsightly aspects and give many gardens the most beautiful, natural backdrops to their plantings.
Get some grand ideas
For stunning garden photography, you must follow @louise_ness1. Louise’s garden on the Isle of Wight is one of abundance, and her account shows it photographed wondrously throughout the year. She has zero personal ego; this is the account to turn to when you want a moment of calm, filled with inspiring photos and reels of her garden, which is to be discovered like a huge tapestry of many layers.
Best of all, Louise writes detailed captions of the plants and season in question, and there is also the magic of the occasional red squirrel visitor. Of similar photographic standard are the high-quality garden pictures posted by Stephen and Brett of @thecountrycrib, whose account documents their life at their 19th-century cottage and garden in Somerset.
Remember to see the funny side…
For garden laughs and a warmth of personality, I’m lucky enough to know @ cotswoldcountrybird, who I often think has a twinkle of Olivia Colman. Having once been gardener to the acclaimed Land Gardeners, Jac uses her account to focus on her own farmhouse and yard garden, as well as various beloved farmyard fowl. Her ducks have a pen that is kept cleaner than many people’s bathrooms, and her energy for baking is incredible.
@tanyascountrygarden is a completely refreshing off-the-cuff diary showing Tanya Demaine going from Bond Street salons to her greenhouse and garden, dragging along her geography-teacher husband who is often head down in the background. She has a brilliant knack of laughing at herself the whole time, something I think anyone using social media needs to be able to do.