Elliott In The Garden | Interview

Since falling head-over-booted-heels for gardening in 2018, Elliott designed and created five distinct garden spaces around his 17th-century cottage in South Oxfordshire. All organic. All peat-free. All no-dig.

The gardens are woven across a third of an acre, each with its own personality: a sun-drenched courtyard, a dry and shady cottage garden, a raised bed kitchen garden, a terrace garden, and a no-dig flower garden.

A passionate believer in instinctive, ethical, relaxed, and romantic gardening. Think generosity, compost, and a few joyful mistakes along the way.

Your Inspiration…

What was your very first gardening memory, and what sparked your initial interest in plants and nature?

It must be said, I’ve always loved the outdoors. I’ve always loved nature. By the time I was at primary school, I was allowed to explore the neighbourhood. My folks meant the cul-de-sac, but I had other ideas. There was a vast woodland just a short walk from our home that felt like a wilderness at the edge of the world. Wild.

Nature and gardens have always been friends to me. Friends that go hand in hand, with the occasional spat or quarrel, but they always make up in the end. Besties again.

My Great-Grandmother was a hugely passionate gardener with a seemingly magical garden. Great Nanny Powell was tiny, but strong as an ox, with a vice-like grip that clamped sharply around your arm should you stray onto her borders. 

At home, I had a little garden of my own. A small semicircular brick-built raised bed. It had cushioning mounds of aubrieta, lobelia, saxifrage, and alyssum (it was the 80s). A collection of rocks and quartz crystals gathered from my forays into Welsh slate mines. A little pond, a resident frog, and a dwarf conifer.

My grandmother, also a passionate gardener on a fog-bound Welsh mountainside, used to joke, “Gardening is in your genes… it just skipped your father!” This always made me laugh, because my father is not a gardener. He freely admits he just does what he’s told.

It still makes me smile, because gardening has always felt easy to me. Almost instinctive. I enjoy the whole process, whereas dear old Dad, like so many, sees it as a job to be begrudgingly completed. With an emphatic tick at the end.

How has your relationship with gardening evolved from when you first started until now?

Before moving into our 17th-century cottage, I’d been renting for years. During that time, gardening consisted of mowing a rather agricultural lawn and trimming hedges, usually badly. Oh, and caring for two potted acers.

When I moved here, to my Oxfordshire cottage, I finally had my own garden. I was inspired, brimming with excitement, yet at the same time completely petrified.

I now owned a third of an acre. A triangular plot, on a hill, surrounded by mature trees. I knew practically nothing about gardening. The garden itself was largely derelict and massively overgrown. Apart from installing miles of new close-board fencing and constructing a terrace to level part of the back garden, those first few years were spent wrestling ivy and brambles, cutting back and ripping out.

In the beginning, gardening felt rudimentary. A chore on the to-do list. It didn’t spark anything. But in 2018, following a bereavement and mental health crisis, I turned to the garden for distraction and solace. Something shifted. I found reward, satisfaction, and a sense of accomplishment.

I discovered I had a natural talent for gardening. My nerdish tendencies meant I learnt very quickly. I developed an instinctive understanding of planting. The hardest part was probably deciphering light, soil, and aspect. I was constantly seeking inspiration from gardening books and magazines, visiting other gardens, and hoarding ideas for spaces I hadn’t even created yet.

How do you stay inspired outdoors?

Great question. The initial creation of a garden and the transformation of a space is highly addictive. There’s nothing better than looking back and realising just how far the garden has developed and matured. Almost everyone loves a makeover!

I’m now at the stage where the gardens only really need tweaking and maintenance. So the inspiration is in the tweaks. I visit great gardens, take a mind-boggling number of photos, scribble notes, and dictate into my iPhone as I go. I still read gardening magazines and books, and I follow inspiring gardeners and gardens through social media. It’s hard not to be inspired with a mind full of beautiful imagery.

I’m never afraid to try new things, and that helps a lot. It’s easy to become entrenched in your own garden and keep it in stasis. But I prefer to keep developing it. Watching how plants mature and decline, reviewing planting combinations for colour and form, and making small changes with big impact.

The garden is an ever-changing landscape. It needs to be allowed to grow and evolve. And we, as gardeners, can be there to nurture and curate the space.

In The Garden….

Tell us a little more about how you designed your garden and what visuals you had in mind.

My garden wraps around the north, east, and south sides of our 17th-century cottage. Because the green space is broken up by the house itself, it felt natural to divide it into separate areas, each with its own personality and purpose.

At the front, the Cottage Garden is shaded by mature birch, hornbeam, and ash trees. It’s filled with spring ephemerals and shade lovers. From June onwards, the canopy closes in and it becomes a cool, quiet space. It’s what I call a “looking garden”, best enjoyed from the house, though we do venture out to sit on the white bench in summer.

The Courtyard began as a redundant corner of the gravel drive. It started with just a bench and three small olive trees and has slowly grown into a white-toned container garden (over 40 pots and planters), restful and calm, echoing the colours of the cottage and filled with every shade of green imaginable. It’s a suntrap and a lovely place to pause.

The Kitchen Garden came from necessity. I wanted to grow food but keep it out of the way. I took inspiration from many sources and created a simple grid of six raised beds, with space for a greenhouse, cutting garden, fruit cage, and compost bays. It’s practical and productive, with flowering companion plants and annuals softening the edges for a more potager-style feel.

At the back, the Terrace was built to create a level seating area on our sloping hill. It’s become home to over 100 pots and planters, centred around the Japanese maples I brought with me. The planting is lush and layered, with Japanese maples, evergreen topiary, flowering shrubs, and seasonal highlights like agapanthus, dahlias, rudbeckia, and cosmos.

The last garden to be made was the Flower Garden - a space that actually came to me in a dream. I wanted deep, blousy borders but needed direct access to the potting shed and lower gates, so the layout had to be simple. One straight path, quadrant beds, and a central circle where you can pause or veer off to an awaiting bench. The borders are over six metres deep and the planting really draws you in, softening the fencing and blending in the surrounding trees and hedgerow.

It’s a romantic space, filled with roses and pollinator-friendly plants. I wanted a garden that feels immersive and naturalistic, with plants you brush past, views that appear and disappear, and roses you can reach and smell deeply.

How has your garden evolved over the years?

The garden has grown alongside my confidence and increasing knowledge, though the overall structure has remained constant. I planted trees and hedges early on, and thankfully, most of those choices were well thought out. So the framework is there. It’s the ‘floof’ in between that keeps evolving.

The Flower Garden has grown bolder in palette, while the Cottage Garden stays true to whites and pastels that glow in the shade. I’m always trialling new plants and combinations, but I’m not sentimental. If something doesn’t thrive or doesn’t suit, it’s either composted or relocated. I usually know within a season, and I’m ruthless about it.

I want a beautiful garden, but time is limited. So the plants have to earn their keep. Right plant, right place. I don’t have the time or patience to act as a plant nurse. In a way, doing the research and choosing well from the start makes things much easier in the long run.

Beyond seasonal pruning, mulching, and placing supports in spring, the ornamental borders more or less look after themselves. I don’t water them, apart from helping new plantings settle in. The container gardens, of course, need more attention, especially watering. The planting in those changes every year, not according to any grand plan, but more on a whim. Sometimes it’s a riot of exotic dahlias. Other times, it’s a quieter mix of pastel hydrangeas, salvias, and scabious.

Do you have a favourite part of your garden, and if so, where is it?

I don’t really have one single favourite spot. I’ve placed benches all around the garden, and each one comes into its own at different times of day. That gives me a real sense of satisfaction, knowing there’s always something to enjoy, whatever the season.

Even in winter, when the Kitchen Garden is bare, I still sit nearby and daydream about next season’s crop plans.

But if I had to choose, I’d say it’s standing at the top of the steps, looking down over the Flower Garden in early June and telling myself “I created this!”. That’s when the borders are full to bursting with roses, delphiniums, alliums, euphorbia, geums, hardy geraniums, floaty knautia, and swathes of nepeta. It’s an intoxicating moment. A real crescendo.

Elliott and Agriframes….

You have a selection of Agriframes products. Could you share how you decided which ones were the best fit for your garden?

I have peony frames, a Gothic arch, and a variety of obelisks. The peony frames are simple and discreet. They disappear beneath the foliage, so the plants appear self-supporting rather than trussed up, which I really like.

The arch was chosen to support climbing roses and to span the Cottage Garden steps, so it needed to be substantial. But I also wanted something with elegance and refinement. I went for the Gothic arch because I love the sweeping shape and those beautiful finials. It brings a sense of structure without feeling too heavy.

The obelisks include the ‘Elegance’ set of three, which I use as garden décor, nestled among the roses and taller herbaceous planting. The rustic ‘Queen Obelisk’ supports Rosa Carolyn Knight and matches the other rusty plant supports in the Flower Garden.

In the Courtyard Garden, I have the sage green Inverted Obelisk. It supports a white-flowering clematis. I particularly love its height and shape, which lets climbers scramble up and then sprawl or trail from the top. It’s both decorative and practical and that’s the sweet spot for me.

What is your favourite aspect of Agriframes products?

For me, it’s the combination of quality and quiet elegance. Agriframes products are extremely well made from durable materials, so they not only look good but also last. There’s a sense of craftsmanship about them that gives real confidence.

But what I love most is their timeless styling. They don’t shout for attention. The designs are refined and understated, which means they sit beautifully in the garden and let the plants do the talking. That’s important to me. I don’t want flashy garden furniture or supports. I want something that complements the planting, not competes with it.

That said, the arches and obelisks are still sculptural enough to hold their own. They provide structure and form, even when the plants aren’t in full bloom. They work hard behind the scenes, but can just as easily take centre stage when needed.

Want to know more about Elliott? Find out more here...

• Elliotts blog
• Instagram
• BBC Gardeners’ World 2025 - episode:10: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002c6jx