A return to Gardening just for the shear pleasure of it. I love gardening and simply being in the garden. Here, within this site, I share everything I know, everything I've learned from my gardens, helping you create, develop, and maintain your garden, healthy, balanced, and a home to both you and nature. Whether you're a seasoned gardener or just starting out, explore the Blog, Gardening Tips, and FAQ for advice, creative ideas, and practical tips.
"If gardening feels like a chore, you're doing it wrong!"
You’re still here… After four chapters, you’re still here! Thank you! I truly wish this was the part where sit back and share a glass of your favourite tipple and reminisce about a job well done. Sadly not. There’s no way of sugar coating this. The catastrophic collapse of our insect and invertebrate populations is happening. It’s undeniable.
In the interests of transparency, my garden wasn’t always the welcoming home to pollinators it is now. As a wildlife photographer, I’ve always viewed flowers and pollinators as intrinsically linked. Although, for the garden, it took some time to really fill the space with ‘quality plants’. I didn’t pick up a spade, carve up my garden, planting solely pollinator friendly plants in some kind of instinctive masterstroke...
At least one species of Bumblebee, the Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), is now active all winter with Queens produced in the summer creating nests in autumn. With the onset of climate change, the UK is experiencing milder and wetter winters, in turn allowing some plants to continue flowering or flowering earlier, providing food for the buff tail. Winter honeysuckle, mahonia, and hellebores are firm favourites. As a consequence, pollinators are on the wing year round and we can be there to lend a helping hand!
Pollinating insects and flowering plants have been co-evolving for over 70 million years. A few elaborate symbiotic relationships aside, the vast majority or plants, whether its bulbs, annuals, perennials, trees or shrubs are essentially open to pollination to whichever ‘creature’ lands on its flower at the right place, at the right time. But the intricacies are fascinating. The adaptations between plant and pollinator are simply mind-blowing.
The vast majority of us gardeners really garden for pleasure, not to save the world or engineer a green-thumbed revolution... However, while we’re upside down in our borders or potting up our spring bulbs, we should remember that we are part of something bigger!
As I’ve discovered on Instagram, my followers really appreciate good photography. Quality matters. Your followers are interested in what you show them and, to a limited extent, living vicariously through your lens and the snapshots of a world that you choose to reveal. Quality images and video can only help improve their experience when followers land on your grid or read through your blog.
For 20 years, I worked as a freelance wildlife photographer, author, and safari guide, but gardening has become such an overwhelming passion, I am now making the transition to garden photography and gardening content creator via Instagram and YouTube.
Although I've only been gardening seriously for about seven years, I am a very fast learner and, once I get my teeth into something, I’m a voracious reader and researcher. But I learn best by doing! And so my gardens have become my school where experimentation, trial and (lots of) error are all encouraged.
I've been inspired by so many gardens and gardeners, such is the accessibility to a world of gardening these day. I can't say who's influenced me the most. The traditionalist in me was truly inspired by Monty Don. During the depths of my depressive episodes, I clung to his 'The Complete Gardener' book when I shut myself away, fervently taking notes and clinging to the hope of Spring and better times. What I enjoyed most was the wholesome holistic approach where pleasure in the process is key, pests and weeds come and go, but it's the pleasure in the everyday.
The contrarian in me follows Charles Dowding - a man that rightly challenges garden dogma and whom truly transformed my gardening with the no dig (minimal soil disturbance) approach. Then there's Fergus Garrett, Head Gardener at Great Dixter. Visiting that garden filled me with so much joy and inspiration and I know Christo had a major influence overall, but it's the garden... the only garden where I felt at home. Instantly at home.
In my garden, I only use peat-free compost. I never use pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, or synthetic fertiliser. I believe in no-dig, feeding soil life, mulching, composting, and organic wildlife friendly gardening.
I actively encourage nature into my garden. I plant for pollinators, making sure I have a variety of flower forms with the garden as whole enjoying a long flowering season. I encourage the birdlife with a little food, clean bird baths and nest boxes. There are always log piles and cover for insects and other invertebrates. And not forgetting the Embankment! 40metres of bank, left wild and weedy with nettles, alkanet, sorrel, wild primrose, herb Robert and is home to solitary bees, bank voles, and frogs.
A carefully curated selection of images and gallery prints. Each image Is available for commercial licensing. If you're looking for images for publication, please contact me directly and I can help search through an extensive catalog. Images protected by Copyright © Elliott Neep
(Under construction)
Wildflowers, fungi, birds, bugs, and mammals
International and British wildlife and wild scenes
