Hip hip hooray!

Celebrating a whole year of The Earthworm burrowing its way into people’s inboxes

Light the candle. Dim the overhead lighting. All together now…

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy birthday to The Eaaaaaarthwooooorm. Happy birthday to us!

A year ago this week, a slippery little hatchling emerged from the protective cocoon of my mind’s eye, burrowed into the soil and – in a confusing act of mixed-metaphorising – began producing digital content related to gardening. And so was born The Earthworm!

I’m as guilty as anyone of dwelling on the past; reliving long-ago-made mistakes; ruing missed forks in the road; allowing nostalgia to morph into melancholy and sometimes descend deeper still into something much darker. While we can all learn lessons from the past, it is so unhelpful and unhealthy to spend too much time thinking about what could, or should have been.

I’m also as guilty as anyone of not trawling the past for positivity; not recalling the moments and decisions and turning points where I made exactly the right decision. I’m not sure if it’s down to self-sabotage or simple modesty, but when we don’t revel in the recollection of our former glories, we deny ourselves the opportunity to build a solid future on a foundation of our own creation.

Forgive me the highfalutin introspection, but hey, isn’t that what birthdays are all about?!

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A year ago, I had arrived at a crossroads in my professional life. The glossy lifestyle magazines on which I had honed my skills and constructed my career were at best struggling, at worst folding. It seemed that people no longer placed any value on writers, writing, or the print media where their work ­– where my work – resided.

I was disillusioned and depressed and had had quite enough thank you very much. You could keep your failing publishing industry; it was a gardener’s life for me. I completed one horticulture course, embarked on a second, and immersed myself in the world of gardens and gardening. It was a joy to be actively learning, to be surrounded by likeminded people, and to be spending so much time in the presence of plants.

But actually, I found that I missed writing. Gardening is a great creative outlet, but a very different one to plucking a random assortment of thoughts and words and streams of consciousness out of the ether and then smooshing them into some semblance of legible order on a page.

Why was I being so binary in my thinking? Why did I feel the need to make a choice between writing or gardening? Wasn’t there a way I could combine the two in a fulfilling fusion of personal passion and professional expression? And hey, why was absolutely no-one interviewing the kinds of people and writing the kinds of stories about gardening that I wanted to read? Where were the horticultural renegades? Where were the offbeat perspectives? Where were the unconventional ideas?

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

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On 15^th February 2022, I declared that The Earthworm had landed. And so began a week of intense output, showcasing my hot new take on the world of horticulture to a gargantuan audience comprising my mum, my wife, my in-laws, and a handful of Facebook friends and Instagram acquaintances.

Unlike many of the writers who have launched publications here on Substack, I didn’t have a ready-made audience that I was leading through the editorial desert to the promised land of a reader-supported newsletter platform. As a result, very few people ended up reading some pieces that still today I’m really proud of; that helped me prove to myself that there was something in this whole Earthworm idea; and that very much sowed the seeds for the content that would follow. To see what I mean, check out ‘Why every gardener needs to watch Disney’s Encanto’, and ‘My very major beef with David Attenborough’s Green Planet’.

From the beginning, interviews have been a big part of my output on The Earthworm. I’ve wanted to offer a platform to people with alternative and outsider perspectives; to dig up stories dwelling beneath the surface of the traditional gardening media; and to speak with some of the biggest names in the horticultural game, but in a way perhaps that they haven’t been spoken to before. (Which I appreciate makes it sound like I spend an hour hurling insults at them. Which I don’t. That usually takes up no more than 5-8 minutes.)

People like legendary garden designer (and now legendary Substacker!) Jo Thompson; paper flower artist Susan Beech; author, forager and natural dyer Rebecca Desnos; grower and cooker and write-abouter of unusual edibles Mark Diacono; indoor vertical farmer Matt Chlebek; and many more besides.

Some of these interviews are a little on the long side, I know, but I love that publishing on Substack gives me the freedom to fully explore ideas, without the usual constraints of word counts and pagination. Through The Earthworm, I’ve also had a chance to share my thoughts and impressions on green spaces in locations as varied as Barcelona and London, Long Island and Kew Gardens.

But best of all, I have been able to forge genuine and meaningful connections with an ever-growing community of people from every corner of the planet. There are my fellow Substack creators, of course, who have been such generous supporters of The Earthworm from day one – including Boaz from Rootbound (who I had the great pleasure of meeting when he visited London last April), Jo from The Gardening Mind, Astrid from A Houseplant Journal, Jan from Gardentopia, Sarah from The Herbalist’s Diary, Lisa from The Suburb Farm, Rohini from The Alipore Post, and too many more to name them all (sorry!).

And then, of course, there’s you.  

I so very, very much enjoy reading your comments and hearing your takes on the subjects I choose to write about. Each time I receive an email from a subscriber, or a notification that someone has left a comment on a piece, a little spark of joy is ignited in my heart. (Apart from that one time some random guy posted a barrage of climate change-denying bile – that was a low point.)

I enjoy writing The Earthworm, but I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much if not for the fact that you read it. When you share a post with a friend, or when you choose to upgrade your subscription, you are helping to sustain my energy, my enthusiasm and my output.

I have always believed that writing – dare I say it, good writing – has a value. This past year, I have pumped hundreds of hours of my time into publishing this newsletter. If you have enjoyed receiving and reading The Earthworm; if it has made you smile or laugh or maybe even think; if you believe that it is worth something, then do consider going paid. Depending on where you live, doing so will set you back no more than the price of a cold pint of lager each month. Cheers to that!

As of today, The Earthworm will be going out to subscribers via your inbox or the Substack app once a week, with additional content and perks each month for paid-up supporters.

So, whether you religiously read every single instalment, share posts to your social media feeds and talk loudly about The Earthworm on the bus, or you just occasionally scroll through the emails for some nice plant piccies, I thank you. Really, I mean it. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Here’s to another year of taking a sideways look at the world of gardens, gardening, and all that good green stuff. Now, who’s for birthday cabbage?