The rebellious gardener

“We need to throw away the rule book, particularly as gardeners can’t rely on the seasons any longer.”

Gardeners can be very set in their ways, but not journalist and self-confessed horticultural rebel Kim Stoddart. In her one-third acre garden in Ceredigion, West Wales, she is always trying out new ideas – following her instinct rather than any instructions from seed packets, books or ‘experts’. The aim is to make the garden more resilient to extremes of weather, while still growing a range of delicious produce. “A lot of the ways we are told to do things still hark back to the old Victorian walled gardens,” she says. “Immaculately dug beds, straight rows, no weeds, and the idea that a ‘good’ garden should look like this. We need to throw away the rule book,