I don’t know about you, but, as someone with an obsession with the botanical world, the dark days of December are always a source of huge frustration for me. It’s not just that as plants slide into dormancy and you don’t get to see as much growth and life around you, but you have only a few fleeting hours of daylight in which to do so. Add to that the fact that the ground is often so sodden that stepping on it can damage soil structure, meaning whole swathes of most gardens become no-go zones, and it can feel like living with your hands tied behind you.
Fortunately, technology has come to the rescue for me. Thanks to the amazing connectivity of Instagram, even when it is soaking wet and pitch black outside, I can learn fascinating horticultural techniques, discover new plants I had never heard of before and drool over the work of the world’s best garden designers. I feel it has democratised garden media in a way never seen before, opening us up to all sorts of global influences. So here are my current favourite accounts that are “must follows” this winter, to inspire you for the spring.
First up is the Aussie bonsai designer Hugh Grant, who is behind the experimental bonsai studio and account @tree_makers. I grew up in Singapore – a culture that is mad about bonsai – but always found them severe and stoic. It’s an opinion that was changed little by living in the UK for 20 years. Yet, over the past year or so, this account has made me do a full horticultural about-turn. Its innovative, exploratory way of creating living sculptures with native plants from the Australian bush, borrowing and adapting ancient Asian techniques, is just so ingenious and refreshing. Not only are his posts beautiful, but they’re full of information about the ingenious ways they have achieved these looks.
One of the best ways to understand how to arrange planting combinations to aesthetic effect is to observe how they grow in the wild. That’s why I love @plantexpeditions run by botanist and explorer Guillermo Rivera, who posts astonishing photos of plants in the wilderness of Africa and South America, including many species better known to us as common garden plants. There’s so much inspiration to gather here.
Finally, it is always good to look outside your comfort zone. So while my natural inclination is to styles with a pared-back colour palette of soft greens inspired by nature, looking at accounts which do the opposite can really open up your eyes. The account of Danish-born UK-based floral designer @YanSkates for me is the epitome of that. Hugely theatrical, floral-dominated schemes in surrealistic multicolour should be stuff I just can’t cope with, but somehow this guy just makes it so beautifully weird and zany. I learn something new with every post.
Follow James on Twitter @Botanygeek
