Dear world,
Wishing you all a restful festive season and a hopeful 2026.
Thank you very much for the green connections, music connections, neighbourly & community connections, study connections and the Substack connections: they are gold!
There are books, frosty walks and the return of light to see us through the coming months. Reach out if you fancy a companion along the way…
With love,
Maureen
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
Image expertly shot by @ellabshoots
“For example, the familiar Christmas Poinsettia appears to show characteristic red flowers. These are actually specialised leaves called bracts, not flowers! Those are the little yellow things in between the red bracts which function to lure pollinators to the flowers…”
It is December and the final @studio.schipper Substack of 2025 is out. Starting off with the plantar kingdom it moves through to explaining how Poinsettias grow plus there is a festive-esque Music-To-Garden-By music journey mixed by @auntie.maureen , news and dates for your diary, a wintery to-do-or-not-to-do list, a green gifting guide and for paid subscribers, a cosy film/podcast/book guide to keep your darker days filled with entertainment.
Link in the bio above.
Thank you for reading, subscribing, supporting, sharing this past year.
Sending festive love,
x Maureen
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
MINDFUL GIFTING:
@studio.schipper recommends a whole guide’s worth of authentic, crafted, informative via a generous read on substack (see link in bio).
Some of my favourite recommendations, in order:
- @studio.schipper pruning & gardening sessions to help a loved one grow or learn to grow.
- Implementations copper gardening tools
- ‘Being With Cows’ by Dave Mountjoy @beingwithcows
- @asherahjewelleryuk in the Palestinian tradition of Tatreez embroidery
- children’s Seed Magazeen from the @landworkersalliance
- socks socks socks, hand dyed by @pigmentorganicdyes
#freepalestine🇵🇸✌️
#ecogifts #mindful #ethicalchristmasgifts #ethicalchristmasshopping #buylocal #buyindependent #buyorganiconline
NEITHER END, NOR BEGINNING…
December is light, and dark, cheer and nostalgia, and this month’s @studio.schipper Music To Garden By, curated by @auntie.maureen holds it all.
You can listen via the mixcloud link in the bio.
Part of the monthly Substack Newsletter Cadence & Cultivation, link also in the bio so you can read, and listen, simultaneously.
Sending you and your loved ones calm, health and green space for the festive season into 2026,
x Maureen Schipper
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
GIVE THE GIFT OF GROWING!
With one of the practical, organic gardening packages STUDIO.SCHIPPER has put together for this festive season.
Help someone bloom in their own garden, allotment or balcony with garden coaching, co-working, seasonal meetings, monthly dates, or a redesign / refresh of a plant area or bed.
Together we can tackle a particular gardening task, nurture a beloved green corner or learn specific horticultural skills.
The offers are charged at 2024 prices for 2026 garden love! Visit the link in the bio for a full description of services plus prices as well as info on how to book.
Sending gentle green cheer,
Maureen Schipper
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
“The North Sea coastline along The Netherland, … , is flanked inland by unique scenery consisting of sand dunes, with as well as without vegetation. The dunes are special as they form a crucial natural barrier protecting the low (‘Nether’) lands from the sea while acting as a huge natural filter for the country’s drinking water supply. The largest and last remaining open sand drift areas in this tiny country, these formations are distinctive ecosystems and geological processes resulting in unique habitats with high biodiversity (see the NERD ALERT inside this month’s @substack ). Leaving behind the beach with its murmuring sea, clambering inland, the dunes hug you with sweet shelter, changing the atmosphere to soft sounds of songbirds, whispering winds and distant cries of children at play. It smells of heather and pines…”
The November @studio.schipper Substack talks of Dutch dunes, traditional ‘klinker’ bricks, the colour purple, with the usual monthly to-do-or-not-to-do list and a moody, bespoke Music To Garden By mix curated by @auntie.maureen .
Thanks for reading, subscribing, supporting, sharing: tell a friend? Link in the bio.
x Maureen
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
SEPTEMBER 2025:
SEEDS OF TOMORROW
“… In Palestine the months of December and January are cold and grey: daylight hours are short and the weather is wet, windy and chilly. There, as well as in the UK, olive trees survive these conditions, so they are classed as hardy…
The ancient olive tree, Olea europaea, has sustained humans since their known cultivation began around 8000 years ago, in the Eastern Mediterranean, most likely in the Levant. Today it is still grown commercially, to produce olives pressed into oil, for lamps, soap making, cosmetics, lubrication, medicine, eating, or to grow as edible, cured fruit, available with or without a hard pit inside…
The pit inside an olive is what grows a new tree: this is the seed that has propagated those ancient, 600-year old Spanish trees! Albeit not the ones from brined processed olives bought in the shop: chuck them on the compost heap…”
This month’s @studio.schipper newsletter is out. It talk about seeds and how to save them, there is Walthamstow / London green news, a nerdy podcast tip about the seed microbiome (mind = blown), a gentle seasonal gardening task list and as always the Music To Garden By DJ mix for September.
Head on over to Substack to read and subscribe (both free as well as paid) via the link in the bio.
Wishing you all happy seedy days! Keep saving.
#freepalestine
x Maureen
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
“I am not afraid of storms,
for I am learning
how to sail my ship”
~ Louisa May Alcott
Back to school studying Garden Design at @capelmanor in Regents Park and I cannot wait to grow! Nor to bookworm my way through the women~in~horticulture section on the library shelves.
x Maureen
@studio.schipper
#backtoschool #educateyourself #criticalthinking #horticulture #gardendesign #capelmanor #gardenersforpalestine #bookworm
/
August is not done yet…
There is still time to grumble, catch up on gardening news, listen to this month’s #freepalestine music-to-garden-by playlist and get help on how to summer prune your fruit trees. This and a whole heap of green love in the August @studio.schipper newsletter.
You can read it all plus subscribe to get money off our gardening rates plus full access to the ever-growing library of how-to gardening articles to help you grow independently.
Link in bio!
Happy end of summer
x Maureen
STUDIO.SCHIPPER
A GIFT,
A dainty species rose from Ann, our allotment neighbour.
She, the rose as well as Ann, brings a smile.
x STUDIO.SCHIPPER at
@plote17communityorchard
Music To Garden By:
JUNE IN LA DOUCE
Close your eyes to imagine the Pyrenees mountains tumbling into the Mediterranean Sea, morning dew on the grass, swallows soaring over a bay, fresh baguette, black coffee, a neighbour’s rooster at 5am, peddling a Peugeot bike through terracotta villages…
This month’s gentle playlist, inspired by working on La Ferme Musicale in Palau-del-Vidres, France, is available for your outdoor listening pleasure.
A link is in the bio.
x STUDIO.SCHIPPER
LA DOUCE
Meet some of the plants I encountered during my time working on La Ferme Musicale, mostly in the vegetable beds:
1) Cyprus rotundus (Purple nuts sedge)
2) Ocalis latifolia (Broadleaf wood sorrel or false shamrock
3) many, many gorgeous grasses, including (LTR) Avena barbata (slender wild oats), Muhlenbergia Mexican (Mexican muchly) and either Triticum monicoccum (Einkorn) or Hordeum vulgate (barley)
4) and finally this beast! Sorghum halepense (Johnsongrass) is an aggressive perennial grass native to the Mediterranean region. It loves to colonise agricultural areas rich in fertility, which the fluvial landscape where La Ferme Musicale grows, is. It readily pops up amongst the Rosemary as well as the courgettes as it establishes along its network of running rhizomes. Any section left behind after weeding will simply regrow.
Feel free to contribute your plant ID knowledge, nicely, if you feel I have misnomered. I am here to learn!
Thanks for all the lessons, plants of my time in La Douce!
x STUDIO.SCHIPPER
