After spending a decade working as a landscape architect, Emma from @emmaatkinsongardendesign often found her plant choices and styles constrained by tight budgets and maintenance concerns. Now, through garden design, she’s able to be more experimental, including in her own Mediterranean-style garden. Read on to find out how her show garden at RHS Badminton was designed to tackle the decline in butterflies and why she recommends growing from seed…
How did you get into gardening?
Images courtesy of Emma Atkinson
I worked as a Landscape Architect for over 10 years, so have always had a keen interest in the outdoors and planting design, but I often found myself limited in the plant choices and styles because of working on large-scale masterplans with tight budgets and maintenance constraints. With gardening and garden design, I feel like I can be a lot more experimental, imaginative, and less constricted by tight design briefs and plant choices.
What inspires you in the garden?
Images courtesy of Emma Atkinson
I love the changing seasons in the garden. Every season comes with new challenges, but also new life as the garden transforms. I also love how, through hours of labour and love, the garden evolves and changes year after year. The garden is also my calm constant, which I feel like I can always come back to despite the chaos and pressures of everyday life.
What’s your favourite gardening style?
Images courtesy of Emma Atkinson
My favourite gardening style is a mix of prairie and Mediterranean planting. I love the naturalistic mix of ornamental grasses and perennials planted in sweeping drifts that create a stunning, very striking look. Equally, I love a Mediterranean planting palette, which is a style I am trying hard to recreate in my own garden. The UK’s warming climate is becoming perfectly suited to this gardening style, as proven in my garden during this year’s heatwave! Mediterranean planting is naturally low-maintenance and drought-tolerant, while still providing gorgeous structure and elegance throughout intense heatwaves.
What are you most proud of?
Image courtesy of Emma Atkinson
I am most proud of the recent show garden I designed for RHS Badminton. I designed a pocket garden to highlight the decline of UK butterfly populations with the Butterfly Conservation Trust. The garden was designed for butterflies and caterpillars, with every plant selected either being a host or nectar plant to support the life cycle from caterpillars to butterflies. I loved the creative element that comes with designing a show garden, while working with some of the best-quality plants to bring the vision to life. I was delighted to have received a Silver medal, but also to bring a really important message to light and hopefully inspire lots more people to take part in the Big Butterfly Count this year.
What are your future plans?
Images courtesy of Emma Atkinson
I would love to design another RHS show garden. After my first taste of designing a show garden earlier this summer, I realised just how much I’d like to do it again. But I also just want to continue immersing myself in the world of gardening while encouraging others to do the same. There really is nothing that brings me more joy than seeing my children exploring the garden, discovering new plants and harvesting fruit and veg for the first time, and I hope I can continue to bring people along with me on this gardening journey.
What’s your top gardening tip for beginners?
Image courtesy of Emma Atkinson
Don’t be scared to give things a go. When I moved into my house, it was the first time I’d ever had my own garden, and I found myself almost frozen with fear for a few months over where to start. I have learnt that things will go wrong and you may lose some plants along the way, but I’ve really learnt to relax into the garden. By making mistakes, I now know what works and what is just not going to survive in my space.
Also, grow things from seed. That way, you don’t have to be as precious or worried if things don’t survive, as it’s a lot cheaper than buying lots of established plants. And one last thing that I’m also reminding myself, things don’t have to be perfect!
Grow like Emma
Image: Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ from Thompson & Morgan
If you’d like to grow the plants and flowers Emma showcases on her Instagram page, here are some of her favourites:
Follow Emma at @emmaatkinsongardendesign to see her garden grow and change through the seasons. 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.