My Real Garden is a celebration of a community that came together during lockdown. I chatted to Ann-Marie Powell about the book and the past year.
When Ann-Marie Powell stood in her kitchen crying at the start of the first lockdown, she never imagined that a year later the country would still be living under restrictions, or that she would have created a new online community, encompassing gardeners across the world.
Like many, she turned to gardening for comfort, deciding to tackle what she describes as her ‘much-neglected garden’ as a distraction from worries about family and work.
Realising she also needed company and motivation, Ann-Marie, an award-winning garden designer, decided to broadcast what she was doing live on Instagram, and the My Real Garden community began.
“We’ve all been gardening together, all over the place,” she tells me. “It’s comforting because you’re not on your own.”
Those daily lunchtime broadcasts from her back garden in Hampshire lasted for the 100 days of the first lockdown and she’s still broadcasting now, albeit weekly with a ‘Sunday School’ that has covered everything from rejuvenating a lawn to planting dahlia tubers.
In the meantime, the community has grown from a handful to more than 19,000 followers with many of the founder members still tuning in weekly.
The My Real Garden book pulls together the voice of that community with pictures of their plots, gardening tips and stories of what their gardens have meant to them over the past year.
It’s been edited with a light touch by Ann-Marie and her long-time friend gardener and writer Tamsin Westhorpe.
“We’ve kept it as near as possible to the way people speak and in their own words so that everybody has their own voice within it.
“For me, it’s been a huge privilege and a huge responsibility.”
It’s also been a huge task completed in record time, the initial costs covered by pre-orders and the whole thing taken from idea to print in just six months. Some of the profits will now go to Greenfingers, a charity that builds gardens at children’s hospices.
Both Ann-Marie and Tamsin have written books before but My Real Garden is a departure from their usual style.
“We were really clear that we wanted to do something different from all the other gardening books that have come before us in that it was energetic and vibrant, and punchy and bright. That it didn’t have any air of conceit but was inclusive, inviting, warm, friendly, and anybody that picked it up would find something they would enjoy.”
Its launch this week is not how Ann-Marie envisaged: “I just didn’t think we’d still be in lockdown. I thought we’d all be meeting each other and having a big celebration because that’s what the book is about. It’s about people and their experiences and their gardens but it’s about community.”
But, although anxious about its reception because of the responsibility she feels for the community she has brought together, Ann-Marie adds: “I’m so proud of my first book but I’m proud of this book, probably more proud because I don’t think it’s ever been done before.”
The My Real Garden book
Everything from the layout to the myriad different ‘voices’ makes My Real Garden stand out in the world of horticultural publications.
It has an overwhelming sensation of colour – appropriate given Ann-Marie’s often colourful outfits on her Instagram live posts – with photos and text laid at jaunty angles on primary colour pages..
Ann-Marie describes it as ‘starting with people’, unlike so many books, which come from the angle of the garden, and it is those personalities that sing out from its pages.
We hear of families using gardens to home school children or occupy toddlers, frontline workers using nature as a way of escaping pandemic stress, and lapsed gardeners rekindling their love of growing.
Yet, it’s also packed with advice from supremely practical gardening tips – “Use wood shims and coloured permanent markers, sealing them to make them weather resistant, for vegetable markers.” – to simple rules for life: “Step into your garden every single day, no matter the weather, and breathe in.”
There are contributions from gardeners with little more than a city centre balcony to those with large, country plots, and there’s an international flavour with Ontario, Ghana and Detroit among the overseas contributions.
Well-known gardeners include top designer Jo Thompson who recommends a “five-pronged slug defence system”, and James Alexander-Sinclair, who warns against rushing in gardening – “If gardens seem as hectic as real life, then you’re doing something wrong!”
Tropical plants, traditional flower borders, vegetables, front gardens, and container gardening of every sort, all play their part.
In her introduction, Ann-Marie says: “I believe anyone can grow sunshine and hope.” This book is a good way to start.
My Real Garden, priced at £25, is available exclusively via British Garden Centres until March 31. From April 1, it will also be available from the My Real Garden website, and Amazon.
My Real Garden is on Instagram Live at 12.30pm (GMT) every Sunday at @myrealgarden
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