About us

I describe myself as a botanist, author and no-dig organic gardener.  My most recent books are  Living on an acre or less, published by Green Books in 2016, The Healthy Vegetable Garden, by Chelsea Green in 2021 plus The Climate Change Garden in 2023.  I’m also an award winning children’s non fiction author, writing on a wide range of topics from natural history and science to geography and engineering. For the last decade i have edited Organic Farming magazine published by the Soil Association.

I’m an avid gardener, growing my first plants at the tender age of 5. Both my grandfathers encouraged my love of plants and gardening. I studied botany at  Cambridge University followed by several years as a restoration ecologist, working in quarries in Shropshire. On moving to a 3-acre smallholding in Hampshire, my dream of keeping animals was realised and I soon had a menagerie of chickens, ducks, geese and a few sheep. A few years later, an inspirational visit to Rosemary Verey’s potager at Barnsley House and a chat with the lady herself,  led to me converting part of a field into a new kitchen garden. Frustrated by the lack of space (common on all smallholdings!) my husband Adrian and I moved west to Empire Farm in Somerset.

Our 100 acre-farm is organic certified and is mostly permanent pasture and meadow with ponds and willow copses. Apart from taking hay,  we manage the land for wildlife, digging ponds and planting trees and we’re delighted that it now supports a huge diversity of insects and birds.  There is also a small community allotment where the allotmenteers have to grow to full organic standards, a flower farm (Meadow and Hedgerow Organics) and a poultry enterprise, both run by others.

Today, my main focus is my walled garden and I aim to create “an ornamental and productive, sustainable garden that is rich in biodiversity and resilient to climate change”.   When we arrived, the garden was completely abandoned,  buried in scrub, nettles and brambles so we put pigs in for a few years. Over the years  I have created a kitchen garden, orchard, herbaceous beds, water features, hedges, trees and shrubs and now there is a mosaic of habitats which helps to boost biodiversity.  I love the  unusual, especially vegetables and I experiment all the time with new techniques, always pushing the boundaries. I am currently experimenting with crushed concrete as a substrate. and I’m measuring the garden’s carbon footprint.

I run workshops on the farm on smallholdings and climate-resilient vegetable growing.  You can read more about my walled garden on my blog here, on twitter (@Sally_Morgan) and Instagram @the_organic_plot and @climatechangegarden. I have long been a #peatfree gardener and I was  one of the founders of the @peatfreeapril campaign.

I give talks on climate change gardening, organic gardening,  living on one acre or less and growing peatfree. I have been a guest speaker at numerous events including RHS Hampton Court, London Permaculture Conference, Toby Buckland’s Flower Festival, Edible Garden Show, the Welsh Spring Festival, River Cottage Festival and the Water Resilience Summit in Totnes. In February 2023 I was invited to talk, along with Kim,  at the prestigious NW Pacific Flower and Garden Festival in Seattle.  I speak regularly to gardening clubs and WI groups and  am a member of the Garden Media Guild.

I’ve been passionate about gardening and the environment for as long as I can remember. When I was running my PR company in Brighton I would daydream about becoming more resilient, normally while in board meetings, and take any excuse to get outside as much as I could. In 2010 I sold up and jumped from a small, protected south-facing garden in Brighton to a 2.3 acre smallholding, 700ft above sea level in the wild West of Wales. I first documented my experiences in a series of downshifter articles for The Guardian before focusing my attentions on gardening and features writing overall. As well as editing The Organic Way magazine for Garden Organic, I write climate change and resilient growing columns for Grow Your Own and Country Smallholding magazines and contribute to a range of publications including The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Lancet, Gardeners’ World, The Express and many more besides. You find more of my national press writing here through my blog. I run courses regularly on all things climate change, biodiverse, organic, resilient, wildlife-friendly, thrifty growing through my climate change training gardens in West Wales, but also for many others including The National Botanic Gardens of Wales, Garden Organic and The Centre for Alternative Technology to name but a few. Polytunnel growing, seed saving, reducing plastic use and small space grow your own also. I regularly conduct webinars for gardening clubs and groups and offer an online climate change and growing under cover course. As well as commenting and consulting regularly on these issues, I also make videos through my production company on a range of related topics to bring alive my love of savvy, nature-friendly, productive grow your own.

About my climate change gardens in West Wales

My gardens lie 700ft above sea level in the wild West of Wales and are very open to the elements. It’s fair to say they have been front-line to the impact of climate change (and greater extremes of weather over the years). From extreme flooding in 2013, which first set me in the path to researching resilient growing techniques, strong winds, to my private water supply running almost entirely dry in the drought of 2018, when I was able to keep my plants productive and prospering for 6 weeks on one watering a week with the techniques I employ. My training gardens themselves are truly alive with wildlife, self seeding plants and experimentation. I allow nature in to lend a helping hand and this in turn creates a very productive, resilient, highly nurturing space in which to be. This is gardening from the past for the future for person, plate and planet. In 2022, I won Environmental Journalist of the Year for an article in The Guardian documenting my climate change savvy gardening experiences.