Milli Proust

My new book is finally ready to meet the world! How Does Your Garden Grow? Is a practical guide to understanding your space and planning, growing and caring for your garden. Inside, you’ll find lessons on soil, garden conditions, and vision, on colour and plant placement to maximise beauty and abundance. Recipes and planting plans. Ways to tweak borders or start a garden from scratch, and a cheat sheet of my favourite plants to use. In depth guides on essential skills such as pruning and propagating (making as many plants as possible for free!), and heaps of help on caring for your dream garden through the seasons. I’ve gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb, all the things I wish I’d known when I began, and filled the pages with clear, actionable steps to help you grow a garden you love. It’s the culmination of almost four years of distilling and writing, and a year of one of my favourite humans and photographers, @eva_nemeth capturing it all. Her photographs truly bring the book to life. Huge thanks too, to my endlessly kind and patient editor Harriet @hdelafield - we have wrangled this book through so many shapes over the last few years, and I’m so grateful for all your care to get it as polished and easy to put to use as possible. And to the brilliant designer Gemma @gemmas_snaps who has made a very practical-heavy gardening book feel not at all muddy, (especially since it rained all year the year it was photographed!), but made it simply beautiful; I don’t know how you do it, but you always weave magic into the pages I hope How Does Your Garden Grow? becomes a well-thumbed companion in your shed, on your windowsill, or tucked under your arm in the garden; a guide and a friend through the seasons. Pre-orders are open now from most places you can buy books! And because they really do make such a difference, I have a little gift: every copy pre-ordered from the Alma Proust website comes with a packet of Guinness World Record-winning teasel seeds. Yes, really. There’s so much more to share soon, but for now, thank you for cheering this one on. I can’t wait for it to be in your hands. With muddy boots and full heart, Milli x

Windowsill Wednesday. The very last windowsill Wednesday in this studio, and I am so ready, but we are full of multitudes, so it’s all the feels simultaneously. A big week too, not just with the move- getting married on Friday, very small, just family, but still it feels big. Then almost straight after, Paris and I are going on a BIG trip. A BIG BIG trip. Trip of a lifetime. We will take you with us, of course. So many dreams are coming true this week, but saying goodbye to all the plants here- oooft. It’s a garden filled with memories; moments with friends, loved ones, it’s been a backdrop for the humdrum of everyday life and a place of solace during the sharper edged moments of life. Loved it here. So much. It’s given me so much, taught me so much, and changed the course of my life. Best first proper garden I could’ve ever asked for. Market found vase filled with water Hydrangea limelight Setaria ‘caramel’ Bronze fennel Roses ‘Kew gardens’ ‘Koko Loko’ ‘port sunlight’ Cosmos ‘double click bi colour rose’ ‘Apricotta’ Apples Egremont russet Phlox ‘creme brulee’ Red current foliage Orach ‘Ruby gold’ Flowering fat hen

With much joy and excitement, I finally get to share the big news with you! I wrote a book! It’s called From Seed To Bloom and it’s out later this spring! If you like to be ahead of the game and be the first to get your hands on it, you can pre-order now from various book stockists- simply click the link in my bio. It’s a practical book on growing a garden, whether that’s on a windowsill or in the ground, from scratch. A book on creating with seasonal flowers, highlighting sustainable mechanics, but most importantly, a book that celebrates the floral landscape around you and how you can interpret it in your own personal style. This is the most intimate thing I’ve ever written, and being a lover of words I’ve included a number of essays about the lessons I’ve learned from the garden- on love, grief, hope and celebration. Along with photos from my favourite photographer Éva Németh @eva_nemeth (who, incidentally was the very best, loveliest, and funnest person to work with), it has turned out to be more beautiful than I ever could’ve imagined. On top of the in-depth planning, growing, harvesting and design principle guides, there are 16 step-by-step design projects- including eight seasonal bouquets, and eight seasonal show-stopper designs that range from large urns, to clouds to archways. And then there are 23 design inspirations and ideas using specific varieties that span all the seasons too. It’s packed, ambitious, practical, and beautiful and I love how it’s turned out. I hope you do too. Thank you to @hdelafield and @gemmas_snaps at @quadrillebooks for all the work poured you into this with Eva and I. I can’t wait for it to be out in the world now!

A day spent this week at @thenewtinsomerset for The Great Garden Show for another stop on the book tour How Does Your Garden Grow? The gardens there, as always, packed with detail, beautiful planting and inspiration. Thank you for the picture (slide 2) @sage.journal

Windowsill Wednesday. Hail, sunshine, wind, rain. Spring layered herself up like a trifle today. The day disappeared into jobs on the field, calls and lists, a great big sort out that led to an unravelling, really just the general muddle of late spring. To end the day, a softener of plum pudding, raspberry ripple and caramel sauce; colours to steady the nerves and sweeten the mood. Outside, everything is whipping about in the wind, petals caught and carried off again before we’ve properly taken them in. It’s spring refusing to settle, and we’ll be all the better for it I’m sure. Mechanics medium pin frog Bowl @avvceramics Wisteria leaves Sweet rocket ‘lavender’ Sweet peas ‘MM’ ‘Scarlett Flake’ Allium roseum

When the sweet peas start to colour the tunnel like this, there’s no place I’d rather be. 1. Mm (third year we’ve grown it and it has been a show stopper every time) 2 & 3. The tunnel in full bloom (morning then evening) 4 & 5. David Tostevin (the first classified as dappled. A shy seed setter- the best ones always are) 6. Future Shock (I’m obsessed with this shifter) 7. Never not comparing MM with KR 8. My boys

Windowsill Wednesday. Cold breath in the morning, sun-warmed shoulders by afternoon. Spring see-sawing between seasons again. The early morning drive as the day warmed up, all the way to my favourite garden Perch Hill. A day teaching gardening, tending, propagating, colour, planting. Watching palettes gather themselves across the table by the afternoon session. Warm tones pulling forwards, peaches, apricots, smoky oranges and copper catching the eye first. Cooler shades drifting back, lavender, grape and lilac bringing depth, shadow and softness behind them. It’s one of the things I love most about flowers, the way colour changes the whole feeling of an arrangement or a border. A day of joy and delight. Thanks for being there! Ninebark Geum ‘totally tangerine’ Sweet peas ‘apricot queen’ ‘Phoebe’ ‘Gerry cullinan’ ‘Daphne’ Tulip ‘Don pedro’ Roses from new garden (not sure of names) Sweet rocket pale lavender Aquilegia Allium

Scarlet Flake might just be my ideal sweet pea. I saw her in Roger Parsons @roger_parsons_sweet_peas patch two summers ago and fell in love. It wasn’t a variety that has been formally introduced to the market yet, but he let us have some seed. We grew her last year here and she performed so beautifully in the garden an the vase so this year we’ve grown a large swathe of her and it is heaven to see her en masse. Hoping for lots of seed to share.

Rosa banksiae for the bank holiday weekend. Treasure kindly bought over by my pal Natalie, popped in this corner on the side while we hung out, and then stayed there because it was too beautiful to move or do anything else with it.

‘Future Shock’ again. My taste for oranges and reds has been deepening over the past few years, and I’m enjoying this one for holding a bit of both. But mostly, I’m just glad the sweet peas are back. We pick these first few stems for a couple of reasons. To document them, building a visual library of everything we’ve trialled, something that might be useful one day. To understand how they hold and move as a cut flower. And because we’ve found that cutting this first flush seems to encourage the plant on, towards a more generous second and third wave. Those later flushes we leave for seed. I always find it interesting seeing what colours you all go for voraciously in the seed shop. Any colours you want us to grow for you let me know. Jug @fraanfossi

Windowsill Wednesday. The sweet peas are back, soft as a wash of colour in the jar. The rain still hasn’t come, clouds drifting over, maybe nothing to give, while the moon keeps hanging low across the field, day and night, as if it forgot to leave. Work has gathered up a pace, beds to make, plants to get in, everything stretching and reaching in this sudden push of the season. My hands are cracking, my back is splitting, but the hedgerows are full, heavy, spilling, and then the wind comes through, lifting petals and scattering them in celebration. So there’s joy. It feels like we’ve tipped early, slipped past a spring without noticing, summer already within reach. And the sweet peas, picked and plonked because who’s got time to precious this month, just too glad to have them back Jar - antique stoneware No mechanics, just water Sweet peas ‘shell pink’ & ‘Lunar Blue’

When the first few flowers appear on the sweet peas, every stem feels so precious. Long-awaited. Soon we’ll have armfuls, but right now there’s just a few. Here’s a variety we’ve been trying to get hold of for years. ‘Future Shock’ originally bred by Keith Hammett @drkeithhammett . Excited to see it en masse. So far, it’s opening in a bright cerise, softening into a deep plum-purple, almost like a bruise, but beautiful. Already thinking about what to pair it with, and how to share more of these rarer varieties with other gardeners.