Kim and Sally realised there was a pressing need for a definitive ‘how to garden’ guide around the increasingly challenging growing conditions as a result of climate change.
Kim has been writing about the subject for publications such as the Guardian, and teaching courses on climate change savvy growing since 2013.
Sally has been championing organic and environmentally-friendly growing for many years and has written about her experiences in several gardening books. She runs several workshops on climate-resilient gardening and smallholding.
Kim and Sally love to share their knowledge and experience of organic, climate change gardening. They write articles and are happy to do interviews for radio, podcasts and webinars. Both offer workshops (both in person and online) and give talks to gardening clubs, horticultural associations, botanic gardens, and events, such as flower shows and fairs.Video making is also an option.
Please get in touch if you would like to work with us.
Sally Morgan
I'm an author and educator, running courses on smallholding and sustainable gardening from my organic farm and walled garden in Somerset
Kim Stoddart
I run courses on all things climate change, biodiverse, organic, resilient, wildlife-friendly money-saving growing through my training gardens in West Wales
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. I speak regularly to gardening clubs and WI groups. I am a member of the Garden Media Guild.
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.
