My new book - first look!

I wanted you, dear Substack readers, to be the first to have a glimpse of my new book, Pastoral Gardens, which is due to be published this October. I’m excited about it - more excited, dare I say than for any previous book, as I think it might be the best yet (and believe me it doesn’t come naturally to me to say this!)

Cattle grazing right next to the courtyard garden at Franklin Farm in Hampshire, home of designers Kim Wilkie and Pip Morrison

I’d like to give you a bit of background to this book because it has been the most amazing experience putting it together. Its title, Pastoral Gardens, hints at the type of gardens we showcase here, taking their cue entirely from nature. I wanted to explore the changing face of garden design as climate change becomes an ever-more dominant force, and in the process I discovered dozens and dozens of incredible gardens being made by people who are passionate about restoring wildlife and ecosystems that are fast disappearing. Meeting these people and learning about how they create these spaces, how they garden and how they integrate these gardens into the landscape, has been one of the biggest privileges of my life. And to see the wild beauty that can be conjured up for humans and wildlife alike has moved me beyond measure.

The garden and meadow merge into each other at Franklin Farm

The aim of the book is to convey this beauty through a series of incredible photographs and to explore the wisdom of each garden owner or designer in the text. In addition, I asked four well known garden designers (Jinny Blom, Nigel Dunnett, Kim Wilkie and Tom Stuart-Smith) to give their perspectives on how garden design is shifting to mitigate climate change.

Working with photographer Andrew Montgomery (who is also publisher and designer of the book, more on this later), I selected 20 gardens to feature in the book - and there could have been so many more. We visited most of these gardens together - apart from one, Jinny Blom’s Kenyan garden, which Andrew photographed five years ago. Logistics (and costs) meant that I couldn’t get there, so this chapter is based on a very detailed conversation with Jinny and a chunk of imagination based on Andrew’s panoramic photos and his own experience of being there.

Umberto Pasti in his garden near Tangier, and Iris germanica in the meadow

I will pull out a few gardens to give you an idea of the experiences I had in the making of this book. First, Italian novelist and garden designer Umberto Pasti and his garden Rohuna near Tangier on the northern coast of Morocco. I first visited this garden about five years ago for House & Garden and fell in love, both with the garden and its wonderful, delightfully mad owner. Arriving at Tangier airport with a friend, we were met by one of Umberto’s drivers in a battered old Fiat, and then transferred to a dusty pick-up. As no-one could speak any English we had no idea what was going on - we thought we were being kidnapped! It was dark when we arrived, and pouring with rain. We descended a stony path through jungle-like growth and emerged into a courtyard around a small stone house. Umberto came out and greeted us with an enormous hug, ‘You Englishwomen have brought the rain,’ he said, beaming all over his face.

Umberto surrounded by his beloved plants

The next day I woke at dawn with that sense of anticipation and excitement that comes from arriving somewhere after dark, and plunged myself into one of the most magical gardens I have ever been to. Umberto has made this garden over 30 years, transforming the bare, rocky hillside into a wonderful, plant-filled oasis. He is passionate about saving the endangered local flora, including indigenous irises, which he plants in the meadow above his garden. Up on the hillside you can wade through swathes of incredible wildflowers (gladioli, ornithogalim, alliums) and suddenly come across a heart-stoppingly beautiful iris, like a jewel in the grass. This very special garden bridges the transition from garden to nature. To be in it makes your heart sing. You feel connected to nature, to the bigger picture, and it reminds you of the power and magic of plants.

Sarah Price in her garden (right) and the graphic seed heads of Asphodeline lutea (left)

The other garden I want to tell you about is Sarah Price’s garden near Abergavenny, which was the last garden to be photographed for the book, just a month ago. We got up at about 3.30am to be in this garden by dawn. In mid-June, sunrise is ridiculously early and to capture this light you have to be there well before the sun rises. On a sunny day by 7am it is already becoming too bright to photograph, and I can’t emphasise enough how important this light is, particularly with the naturalistic style of planting we were capturing for this book. As the light becomes harsher, the nuances of light and shadow disappear and so does the magic. The true atmosphere and essence of a garden is revealed only at dusk and dawn.

Sarah Price’s walled garden with a medley of tough, drought-tolerant species planted in sand, gravel and rubble

Sarah’s garden is astonishing - an intricate tapestry of flora and foliage in a walled garden where she has altered the growing medium with sand and rubble to stretch the species diversity. It is very much informed by the patterns of a wild landscape, and there are so many interesting plants growing here with little intervention. Her planting schemes are delicate and painterly, achieved as much by self-seeding as by design, but always with a discerning overview determining which plants stay and which go. This naturalistic, structure-free planting was difficult to photograph but we got some interesting photographs by diving into the detail and looking more closely at the groups of plants and their relationships.

A nest of fledgling pied flycatchers at Brook Manor

One of the most striking things about this book is that it includes portraits of humans, animals, birds and even insects alongside the garden views. Human beings are crucial in the shaping of each space. These gardens are the opposite of static and stable - they are purposefully elastic and ever-changing to welcome in as many species as possible in a controlled way, and human intervention through considered, clever gardening is essential.

Cows, ducks, chickens and dogs also appear in the pages, all part of the wider ecosystems. Birds too - including a nest full of adorable pied flycatcher fledglings at Brook Manor in Devon - and beautiful hawk moths at Old Lands in Monmouthshire. We wanted to show how humans can share their gardens with wildlife and highlight the ways we can all encourage more biodiversity.

Isabel and Julian Bannerman’s garden at Ashington Manor in Somerset - a mix of formal topiary and nature-inspired cottage garden borders

You will find that each of the gardens in this book is completely different from the next. We have traditional cottage gardens, sleek urban backyards, ground-breaking xeriscape gardens and - right at the end - a garden that is really just a slightly tweaked patch of wilderness. The reason we have been able to get this slightly zany mixture is because we called the shots by deciding not to go down the traditional publishing route. Andrew decided to set up his own press several years ago, and one of the first books he published under his own imprint, the Montgomery Press, was our previous collaboration, Winter Gardens, which pushed boundaries and sold out almost as soon as it was published.

Arthur Parkinson with his beloved bantams (right) and the meadow in his grandmother’s former garden in a Nottingham suburb

Rather than being beholden to a traditional publisher who understandably wants you to go down a certain route to make the book commercial under their terms, we have had the creative freedom to produce these books in exactly the way we want. And with only four of us involved in the entire process - author, photographer, designer and copy editor - the overheads are much lower, meaning that we can produce an incredibly high-end product in a way that makes commercial sense. It’s never going to make us rich, but that’s not the point. What matters to us is to make a book that we are proud of, on a topic we feel is important, in a way that is both beautiful and inspirational.

Andrew Montgomery and me in the walled garden at Knepp

We won’t have final copies until October but you can pre-order your books now by visiting the Montgomery Press website. I hope it will be the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who loves gardens, nature, art and photography, or all those things rolled into one, as I do. I hope you catch some of the passion that has been passed on to me by the people who made these gardens.

Clare x

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Also, I’d like to start interacting more with you, my readers, to get your feedback, see some of your own gardens (I know some of you have been following my border series and have been working on your own borders!) and finding out more about you. There is a platform for us to form this community in the Substack app (see link above), where you can make comments and start threads in Chat, and I’m going to start posting there every weekend with a Realtime Gardening update on my garden. It would be great to have your realtime garden updates too. Looking out for this icon in the app or website homepage for the chat page:

On the app homepage you can also follow other people in Notes, which is Substack’s version of Twitter or Instagram. You’ll find all sorts of interesting journalism there on multiple topics. For those who just want to continue reading my newsletter in their email inbox - that’s absolutely fine too of course!