Favourite job -pruning

Early in my career I worked on a variety of cookery and home magazines as a Designer and Art Director, eventually becoming Editor of a national gardening title. I am now lucky enough to work from home where I edit and produce ‘The Cottage Gardener’, the quarterly journal of The Cottage Garden Society. When not doing that I take photographs of my garden that I sell to publications around the world through garden libraries.

Our garden is on the Surrey/Sussex borders and measures 80 x 40 feet. It is full of trees, shrubs and cottage garden flowers and has six fruit & vegetable beds, a greenhouse and two studios, one for my artist husband Tom (Boulton Gallery) and the second is mine and is full of old garden tools and watering cans. I am out in the garden most days – weeding, pruning, extending a border or setting up a photo shoot.

Cut spring flowers from the garden in my collection of old glass bottles on the greenhouse bench

This blog is a record of our gardens past and present, with  photographs I have taken that demonstrate how I display plants throughout the seasons, with some quirky and decorative recycling ideas that should give you some idea of  what I get up to in my garden.  Julia Boulton.