A few people have asked why we're starting to publish these themed batches of articles (our intention is now to do one series each month), so I thought I'd explain.
The first reason is simply to highlight an important issue affecting our gardens, pass on one or two useful ideas, and hopefully leave you with something worth thinking about without being preachy. If we can sneak in the odd Dad joke and encourage some friendly discussion along the way, even better.
The second reason is to explain, without turning it into a sales pitch, what makes Garden Rescue different.
We have nothing against routine garden maintenance — it has an important place and this area is well served by excellent gardeners. It simply isn't what we do. Our focus is the long-term health and resilience of gardens. Rather than visiting every week to keep everything tidy, we tend to appear once a month or once a quarter, quietly carrying out the jobs that pay dividends months or even years later.
Our aim isn't that you simply admire how tidy everything looks at the end of the day, but that nine months later you're sitting beneath an apple tree full of fruit or admiring eye-popping azaleas in spring and quietly think, "Oh wow."
We did try to think of a better description than "gardeners". The best we came up with was "horticultural surgeons" or "cunning wizards", both of which sound a little full of ourselves. If anyone has a better suggestion, we'd genuinely like to hear it.
The third reason is perhaps the geekiest. We simply enjoy writing about what we love, sharing what we've learnt, learning from others, and hearing different perspectives.
Speaking of feedback, we welcome all points of view. The only requests are that, if you're going to criticise us, please be honest, don't make things up, and do read the article first. Secondly, if you're going to insult us, at least be creative. Ordinary abuse is rather boring. Bonus points if you make me laugh. And if you'd like to sing our praises... don't let modesty get in the way.
We also appreciate technical feedback. For example, someone pointed out that the formatting of the first article wasn't displaying properly on some mobile devices, which has now been fixed. Even better is learning something new ourselves, such as Ian introducing us to the word "evapotranspiration". Good spot, Ian.
This first batch seems to have generated some genuine interest, which we hope will continue to build with each series. The first article appeared late last week, the second over the weekend and the concluding article yesterday. They really are intended to be read together. So far they've been viewed just under 5,000 times on Nextdoor and, since Friday, around 10% of all visitors ever to our two-year-old website have arrived there because of this series. Enquiries for late July and August projects, inspired by this, are also beginning to come through, so perhaps we're onto something.
Anyway, that's quite enough waffle for one month. We promise no more articles until later in August, when—given British weather—we'll probably all be talking about flooding instead.
Thanks to everyone who has read, commented, disagreed, corrected us and shared their own experiences. We genuinely enjoy the conversations these articles start.
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