Will travel for gardens!
Here it is! Our Botanical Adventure Itinerary to visit the home of the world's most popular roses, most famous garden show and some of the most celebrated and exciting gardens on the planet!
As autumn settles in here in the Southern Hemisphere my focus is in fact on a European late Spring, and what to pack to deal with anything from freezing mornings to high heat in the middle of the day, from trotting about the world’s most famous garden show to studying in some of the world’s most famous gardens.
In less than a month I will be one lucky little duck as I arrive to do a week under the instruction of Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter in the UK (still can’t quite believe it). If you aren’t familiar with Great Dixter as a gardener, you should be as it is recognised around the world in horticultural circles, and that of garden lovers, as leading in the practice of ornamental gardening, gardening for biodiversity, and horticultural education. It is, in fact, considered the 25th most biodiverse place in the United Kingdom since last I heard Great Dixter’s Head Gardener and visionary, Fergus Garrett, speak. Believe it or not, this is quite a feat for a garden in the eyes of ecologists and biologists but I’ll go into that another time.
This once in a lifetime experience will be followed by another, a visit to the famous Chelsea Flower Show in London where I get to rub shoulders with my horticultural heroes and then spend two weeks visiting some of the most incredible gardens in the world, travelling throughout country England, Paris and Italy. I get to do most of it with my favourite people to boot, with Hugo, Nes and mum joining me on the adventure……and you too, if you’d like?! Well, from the comfort of your favourite reading spot that is, as a Paid Subscriber here on our Substack.
So, some of you may not know that part of the Garden at Moorfield substack there is the section mentioned above called, “The Garden Gadabout” and in this section I don’t talk about our garden for the most part, though I might reference it in relation to what I am experiencing and capturing on my camera in someone else’s garden and this is where our upcoming Botanical Adventure will live. There are few joys greater to me than that which can be found in one’s own garden but what does come close is being in the gardens of others and that could literally be anything from a balcony jungle to a sprawling estate of multiple garden rooms. They’re all gardens to me and they should all be celebrated for what they mean to their makers, the inspiration they offer everyone else no matter where people live, what they can afford and why they feel compelled to surround themselves with the magic of plants!
To me it is a privilege to be immersed in someone else’s green sanctuary, wander the garden paths of their imagination and vision played out in plants, hear their stories as to what inspires them to create their own little worlds in plants that give us so much, study combinations you’d not thought of in colour, texture and species and uncover some of their tricks for success. And sometimes, when all the stars align, have the opportunity to be in the presence of some of the oldest and most revered gardens in history that have gone on to inspire gardens and gardener’s all over the world for centuries, as this upcoming trip will allow me to experience firsthand and share it with you here in this space.
People have said to me to just go and enjoy it, the trip, forget work, forget writing about it, which is my work, that it’s meant to be a holiday but for me it really is in part, a working holiday, that is why I am there to learn and grow as a Horticulturist, Designer and Writer. I think of an old, and often overused but none the less, very accurate adage as I write this, that in doing something you love, you never work a day in your life, it is hard work of course, to produce it all but it is also just something I really get so much out of doing and enjoy so much that the hard work it takes, is secondary.
My hope in doing this, is that it makes the hearts of all you garden lovers, flutter and excited for the green spaces we spend our time in. I also hope it provides escape from a hard day (week, year or life) for a few sweet moments as I take you into some of the most beautiful places ever made, implant new ideas for your own gardens or set you off on your own botanical adventures, at home or abroad.
The Garden Gadabout is where I share these stories, I do them as often as I can (most recently I shared The Highline in NYC in early Winter and a visit to the NYBG) and try to give the reader a sense of what it is like to actually be there, I context and history and where it is a home garden, offer a glimpse into what inspired the making of it and what it brings to its maker, from the maker themselves.
In fact, I am about to release a piece onto The Garden Gadabout about my amazing now friend, Natasha Morgan but who, for many years before we met, officially, after years of following eachother on our Instagram accounts, was a huge inspiration to me over my career in horticulture and in the making of my own gardens. Now I have the good fortune of only living a short drive from Natasha’s beautiful new home and garden after Oak and Monkey Puzzle fame, called Little Cottage on a Hill and will be sharing all about my late summer visit to this special place and a Q&A with Natasha about the special garden she has created in Daylesford, Victoria, in lieu of her first book coming out. It will be a cracker of a garden companion!
So, now you know where the Botanical Adventure will be living on here, below is my itinerary or more so, a schedule of publications I will be releasing in The Garden Gadabout section, while in the UK and Europe but also, upon my return, as I collate and distill down, what will no doubt be thousands of images, musings and ideas.
BOTANICAL ADVENTURE ITINERARY
GARDENS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM:
A visit to Hummelo and Wirth at Somerset - A Piet Oudolf Garden.
A week of learning at Great Dixter, under Head Gardener, Fergus Garrett
A visit to Fairlight End Garden (as part of my week with Great Dixter)
A visit to Sissinghurst Castle Garden (as part of my week with Great Dixter)
A visit to Charlotte Molesworth’s Garden at Balmoral Cottage (as part of my week with Great Dixter).
A tour of the gardens at David Austin Roses Headquarters with Senior Rose Consultant, Liam Beddall.
A visit to Hidcote and Kiftsgate, Cotswolds
A visit to Knepp Castle - A Story of Rewilding and Gardening for Resilience.
A Tour of the King Charles’s personal organic ornamental and productive garden at his home, Highgrove, 40 years in the making.
Chelsea Flower Show RHS Member Day
GARDENS IN ITALY:
La Foce, Val d’orcia
NOTE: Our itinerary for gardens in Italy is limited as this is family time in a place special to our family and therefore, spending time visiting gardens is less the priority. In saying that, we are travelling from Turin in Northern Italy to Tuscany and I am researching gardens on this route currently and Italy is awash with incredible green spaces everywhere so I am more than likely to stumble across a couple more a long our travels to feature here. We will also be briefly in Paris but again, this time is going to be spent with family so I am unsure if at this point I will be visiting any gardens or green spaces long enough that I will have a chance to capture but I am sure can agree, there here is plenty to enjoy none the less.
Thank you everyone for being here. I hope for those of you who will be joining me via our Substack on our little Botanical Adventure are looking forward to the stories, pictures and videos we put together of all of these very special places. I am so excited to be able to share them with you. xo
A note on subscriptions….
When I began here on Substack a couple of years ago now, I set my price at $5 per month or $50 for the year, and I’ve never put that price up. Though this is what most writers do on an annual basis and with which I have no issue of course, they value their work, as do I, to share that which takes a lot of time, effort and passion. It is a joy. It is a privilege that you read my work and let me share with you our gardening world with so much other noise out there. In saying this, I can’t give away hard earned know-how for free, I can’t dedicate the time it takes for free, I do however want it to remain as accessible to as many people as possible.
We are a Bestseller here on Substack, getting that little tick was something we are very proud of and love to be in this space more than any other online platform that we are in. Though it has to be said our Instagram following has largely fed this platform in the first instance, our audience, this is now changing and most are coming direct through Sustack but unlike Instagram these days, this space feels like that space used to.
A community of gardener’s forms, and garden lovers, in this space where the connection feels more authentic and we reach who we mean to. Here we can be more nuanced for the pure fact that we can share more of what we do and don’t need to dumb it down, squeeze detailed work into a 30 second reel or summarise complex stories into X amount of words which loses the detail and the reality of what doing this is really like. I get that our brains are full, maxxed out and so the short form is for many, the only thing some can take in but for others, it is this long form writing that relieves the brain of its burdens, a chance to really escape. It certainly does so for me in the writing of it and in the reading of other writers that I follow here.
In this space our Free Subscriber’s receive some written pieces more sporadically from The Garden at Moorfield Journal and Garden Gab, and we hope these are enjoyed?! Judging by how many new people we welcome here every week, I think this is the case. However, for the commitment we receive from Paid Subscriber’s that we understand is not always easy for people to make but who want to support my writing in this way, we appreciate it more than I can really find enough words to ever fully express. These reader’s have access to the work that takes the most to produce and is the most valuable in terms of gardening content.
The indepth pieces like the Garden Guides and Cheat Sheets for how we do what we do here at Moorfield, what it takes to build an organic food and flower garden from scratch, yourselves and how we did it the first time, back at Little Oak where many of you first found us over a decade ago now, are part of Paid Subscriptions. Paid Subscriber’s also have access to the Chat where you can quiz me on your gardening questions whenever you so choose, a monthly garden video diary which is a behemoth effort every month but brings together mine and Hugo’s love for storytelling in this medium (Hugo used to work in film and tv) and finally, written pieces with lots of lovely pics on gardens beyond just our own, this section is called, The Garden Gadabout (where this latest Botanical Adventure will live). Paid also gets access to every Garden at Moorfield Journal, and The Garden Gab, of which this piece belongs.
If you are a Free Subscriber and you’re not sure of making the commitment of $5 per month or $50 for the year, you can always sign up for the Free Trial which lasts 7 days.
I try to publish once a week, every week, to be consistent and we hope to give you what you want, not too much, not too little and that you enjoy that which you get a chance to read. On that note, I want to thank you all for being here, in whatever capacity you can and choose to be. It really is something to be able to share all the things I love about gardens and to use my passion for words and garden photography to do so. For those of you in Australia, enjoy another Long Weekend and Lest We Forget and for those of you elsewhere around the world, enjoy a couple of days off to be in gardens or out in nature, or inside snuggled up, reading about them xo
Love your work and sharing of inspiration.
I am very jealous of your trip😊.
Have a fantastic time.
Can’t wait 🥰