Image courtesy of Chloe Plumstead
When @chloeplumstead was little, she loved pottering in the garden with her nan and watching her mum turn a plain council estate plot into a buzzing mix of flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Now in her thirties, she co-runs a gardening brand for women and tends her own garden and allotment that are overflowing with colour and abundance. Read on to find out how she turned a childhood love of gardening into a life full of blooms, experiments, and joyful chaos…
How did you get into gardening?
Image courtesy of Chloe Plumstead
It’s difficult to say when I first fell in love with gardening because I inherited the gene down the maternal line. From a very young age, I was pottering around in the garden with my nan, watering plants with my tiny watering can as she dibbed, dug and deadheaded. Then when my mum, brother and I moved into a new home, my mum completely transformed the council estate garden from an overgrown rectangle into a buzzing medley of flowers, fruits & veggies – she even added fish into the ponds that she dug herself. I’ve been surrounded by women doing wonderful things with nature from the get-go.
I started experimenting myself in my mid-twenties. I was living in a rental at the time with a tiny concrete garden but I began to see what I could do with the space, growing potatoes and tomatoes in pots, planting my first bulbs and so on. Fast forward to my thirties, and I now co-run a gardening brand for women. I have a little garden of my own and a half allotment plot which I took over last year. I still refer to myself as a novice because I feel like I’m always learning, but growing and gardening have really become the centre of my life.
What’s your favourite gardening style?
Images courtesy of a Chloe Plumstead
It’s not a gardening style per-se, but I have to confess that I’m not hugely interested in large estate gardens. Give me a regular, domestic garden any day, catered to and maintained by the same person over years and years, simply because they love it. I feel the everyday gardener is often unsung in favour of big budget gardens, but it’s in our own spaces in the evenings and weekends that magic really happens.
So I like a bit of mess, a bit of disorder, nothing meticulously planned. If I had to describe my own style, perhaps modern cottage? I love bright, hot pinks and abundance – plants crammed in and spilling out of borders.
What inspires you in the garden?
Images courtesy of Chloe Plumstead
I’m inspired by the sheer variety of what it’s possible to grow. It’s a smorgasbord, a veritable chocolate box of options, and I feel a renewed sense of excitement every year that I get to try something new.
It’s impossible to be bored in the garden! There’s always something to do and so many ways to do it. I love that I can say to myself ‘okay, I’ll grow some squash this year’, and then spend three days deep-diving into all of the different varieties, their pros & cons and risks & rewards. The same goes for dahlias – every year I try new cultivars, holding onto the ones I’ve tried, tested and loved while building up my library of favourites.
What are you most proud of?
Images courtesy of Chloe Plumstead
I’m most proud of my large fatsia. It’s been grown from a cutting taken from my nan’s garden years and years ago, and it’s now nearly 6ft tall. It’s the first thing I see from my back door when I look out into the garden and it makes me think of my nan every time.
What are your future plans?
Images courtesy of Chloe Plumstead
This year I experimented with edimental planting – interweaving edible and ornamental plants to grow food alongside flowers – but next year, I’m going back to growing predominantly blooms in my garden, keeping the food for the allotment. I realised that I missed looking out upon a sea of dahlias and, with the plot, I have more than enough space to grow food, anyway.
I’ve just dug up my sunny border to start afresh with planting. I covered my tiny lawn in spring and rushed ahead with growing, but the plant placement and spacing was all messed up so I’ve gone back to the drawing board, starting with improving the soil with lots of homemade compost.
Other than that, I hope to grow more of what I like to eat. I’m a bit of a magpie; I tend to get drawn in by new and interesting things, and then end up with a tiny harvest or lots of what I don’t really like (Swiss chard being a prime example!)
What’s your top gardening tip for beginners?
Image courtesy of Chloe Plumstead
My top tip? Listen, watch, read, yes, but then get out there and make mistakes for yourself. It’s the only way you’ll really learn, and you should be mucking up! Gardening and growing requires you to set perfection aside and embrace patience. And remember, you have a responsibility to these outside spaces. We are only custodians – the outdoors can never truly belong to us – so if you’ve moved into a new home and you don’t expect to be there for a long time, please don’t concrete the whole space over and shove one potted tree in the corner. Remember there will be gardeners after you, and gardeners after them, and so on. Respect your outdoor spaces and they will reward you endlessly.
Grow like Chloe
Image: Dahlia ‘Cafe Au Lait’ from Thompson & Morgan
If you’d like to grow the plants and flowers Chloe showcases on her Instagram page, here are some of her favourites:
Follow Chloe at @chloeplumstead to see how she continues to grow, inspire, and make the most of every inch of her garden. For more inspiration, our full series of Featured Gardeners contains a wealth of hugely knowledgeable growers who are also worth a follow.
The Thompson & Morgan horticultural team produces a wealth of content around gardening and food production. Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.