Yahoo Finance Herb your enthusiasm: best gardening influencers to follow now
It started four years ago with a bag of tulip bulbs. My husband Will bought them online and we Googled how to plant them. The following spring, to both our surprises, they nudged up through the soil — straight, bright little soldiers saluting us through the kitchen glass. Well how satisfying, I thought, this gardening business.
What followed was a voyage of plant discovery and occasional murder (RIP French Lavender). If you had told me in 2017 that I would become the sort of person who pauses Gardeners’ World on a Friday night to screengrab Monty’s jobs for the weekend and has (at the time of writing) eight Sarah Raven tabs open on my laptop and a kitchen table covered in cornflower seedlings, I would have thought you were insane.
Past Lucy thought gardening was outdoor housework for old people. Past Lucy was a fool. What I didn’t know before I became a gardening obsessive is just how much, with some basic knowledge, a garden can reward you for relatively little effort. I also didn’t know how much you can grow in a tiny space — my London manor is about the size of a postage stamp but it’s amazing what you can cram in. I’m in good company — more than three million people started gardening last year and Selfridges is even tapping into our enthusiasm with a new Garden Centre at the Oxford Street store opening yesterday complete with a Prada gardening line and a yellow Selfridges gnome.
Wellness gurus rave about “earthing” — removing your shoes to connect with the ground. Gardening is just earthing with a purpose. I didn’t know at the time we planted those yellow tulips, but this new-found passion would also prove to be a sanctuary during a painful, four-year struggle to have a baby. After losing my fourth pregnancy last September, I came home from the hospital and dug a trench for my ranunculus bulbs. But this aside, I love finishing a weekend with a sunburned nose and dirt under my fingernails, or coming home from work, sticking on a podcast and swooping on my pots — clippers in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. And I’m not alone in this.
Gardening is enjoying a boom with Millennials and Gen Z-ers. A recent survey of 2,000 18-34-year-olds found 54 per cent of them would rather visit a garden centre than a nightclub. And although respect must always be paid to horticulture’s sexy uncle, Monty Don, a love of gardening has opened me up to a brilliantly diverse set of green-fingered Instagrammers. Want a little inspiration to kick start your own green-fingered adventure? Here are some of my must-follows:
The flower men
Dahlia season is nearly here, which means Charlie McCormick (@mccormickcharlie) and his borders full of the firework-like blooms are a must-see. Follow for the flowers, stay for the videos of ducks on slug patrol. Charlie’s husband, Ben Pentreath, is the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s interior designer, so their Dorset home is also dreamy.
If your garden is small and bed-free then let Millennial horticulturalist Arthur Parkinson (@arthurparkinson) inspire you. His book, The Flower Yard, has loads of tips on growing blooms in containers, including his show-stopping tulip bulb “lasagnes”. He likes to garden with a fluffy bantam hen perched on his shoulder.
Special mention in this category should also go to celebrity hair stylist Sam McKnight (@sammcknight1) and his show-stopping roses, and comedian Joe Lycett, who affectionately refers to his flowers as “slags”.
Essential accessory: A vintage watering can.
The urban jungle crew
Think the small and shady confines of your London garden or balcony are holding you back? This lot can help. Alice Vincent of @noughticulture created a miniature hanging gardens of Babylon from her old London flat (nicknamed The Treehouse). She moved to more spacious city digs last year but continues to share her urban gardening wisdom, and the benefits being green-fingered can have on your mental health.
London-based Swede Stina Hasan’s (@thehackneygardener) dreamy backyard is also a masterclass in how to turn a narrow plot into an urban haven with a rambling, English country feel. And it’s impossible to talk about city gardening without mentioning the fine work of @thebalconygardener Isabelle Palmer, the woman people call on to give the harshest concrete corners of London a green makeover.
Essential accessory: Clippers by cult Japanese brand Niwaki
The dig for victory brigade
You don’t need a big plot to grow your own (salad can be sown in a window box) but however ambitious the plan is then Ashley Nwokorie with her Surrey allotment has you covered. On @allotmentcafe she shares easy-to-follow tips on nurturing fruit and veg, assisted by her two gorgeous children.
Tipped as the “next Alan Titchmarsh” 21-year-old Huw Richards (@huwsgarden) is another big name in the courgette space. His YouTube account Huwsnursery, run from his family’s Welsh smallholding, has nearly half a million subscribers (he started vlogging about gardening aged 12, while his friends were posting video game reviews) and takes an organic, sustainable approach.
But if size is your priority, then pensioner and internet sensation Gerald Stratford (@stratfordgerald) — with his giant carrots — is your man. Kate Beckinsale is already a fan.
Essential accessory: Braces, corduroy (ideally both)
The good lifers
You know that quit-the-city life you dreamed up for yourself during the first lockdown — house down a country lane, apple scrumping, nap dresses and wellies? These guys are living it. Lori Laing (@lori_laing), who relocated from London to Lancashire with her landscape gardener husband Andrew, shares lush herbaceous borders, rescue chickens and the occasional shot of a baby asleep in a wheelbarrow.
Norfolk-based Paula Sutton (@hillhousevintage) is also a must-follow for pure country lifestyle envy (never knowingly under-dressed, she inspects her lupins in a cocktail dress). For a more pared back aesthetic, try American Herbalist Alyson Morgan’s beautiful account @alysonsimplygrows. Every shot could be lifted from the pages of Folk magazine and she’s a font of knowledge on the medicinal benefits of plants.
Essential accessory: A wicker trug.
The no-garden gardeners
Growing plants indoors is so much harder, so huge respect to the no-garden crew for turning their apartments into city oases. Across the pond Christopher Griffin, AKA @plantkween, is a dose of green therapy for your feed — combining Monstera-growing tips with motivational quotes from their New York apartment, while closer to home, Georgette Olaiya (@thegardensofgaia) blends re-potting and leaf cleaning videos with verdant “shelfies”. Then there’s the obscenely talented James Wong (@botanygeek) whose terrariums are tiny, exquisite worlds of their own. Something to strive for if you’ve just murdered your fifth fern.
Essential accessory: A hanging pot from Anthropologie
