The Q&A: Dan Masoliver, creator of The Earthworm

The journalist and nature lover invites us into his small East London garden

Dan Masoliver in his garden. © Dan Masoliver

One of the many curious aspects of the first Covid-19 lockdown was the revelation that we’re not all as original as we might once have thought. From sourdough baking to language learning via Zoom quizzing, it seemed that we all spontaneously decided to fill our enforced homebound time in much the same way.

And in no area was this more evident than in growing. Practically overnight, it became impossible to buy seed, especially for popular crops such as tomatoes. Garden centre shelves lay bare - partly down to issues with supply, mostly down to a huge surge in demand. And compost? Well, that suddenly seemed a rarer and more precious commodity than gold. By some estimates, the Covid-19 pandemic was responsible for creating as many as 3 million new gardeners in the UK alone.

Dan Masoliver was not one of those people. Not exactly. He fell into a different category of cliché: the career switcher. The writer had been tending to his humble East London garden for a number of years, learning from magazines, TV shows, and a litany of catastrophic mistakes. What the pandemic did for him, as it did for so many others around the world, was encourage him to ask the question: could this love and appreciation for growing, and the natural world more widely, somehow be converted into a career?

I caught up with Dan at his home in Walthamstow, East London to find out more about his transition from journalism to horticulture, and his new Substack publication.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: don’t I know you from somewhere?

I guess that depends on how deeply you know yourself.

Hm, food for thought. So when was the moment you decided to ditch a steady career as a freelance journalist and retrain as a gardener?

There was no epiphany moment, unfortunately. I wish there had been - it would have made the process so much easier. As it was, a combination of the rapid decline of traditional - or “legacy”, to use industry jargon - magazine brands, which was where I’d carved out my career, coupled with the blossoming of my love of gardening, all combined to make me question what I was doing with my life. Professionally speaking, that is.

So what, you just threw the laptop in the bin and picked up a pair of secateurs instead?

Not exactly. In time I’ve realised that what I really want to do is not switch from writing to gardening, but to combine my experience of one with my passion for the other.

Speaking of experience, where does your horticultural knowledge come from?

Until recently, I learned everything I knew about gardening simply from having a go - and messing it up, more often than not. And then absorbing as much horticulture media as I could get my hands on. I have a subscription to both Bloom and the RHS’s The Garden magazines, and am a big Gardener’s World fanboy. My wife calls me Monty Dan, which I think is cute, but wholly unearned. But even so, I was under no illusions as to just how much I didn’t know, which is why I enrolled on two separate horticultural courses: one with the food-growing cooperative Organic Lea, and another at Capel Manor college.

Go on then, what sort of mistakes are we talking here?

Oh God, I mean, where do I start? I’ve made every mistake in the book, from pruning shrubs at the wrong time and foregoing an entire year’s worth of flowers, to losing a whole crop of grown-from-seed brassicas to a biblical infestation of cabbage white caterpillars - turns out I should have been covering the broccolis and cabbages with protective netting, rather than trying to take photos of the pretty little butterflies fluttering around my plants. But the biggest mistake that I have made over and over again is the classic one of “wrong plant, wrong place”. Tracking how the sunlight moves across my garden, and therefore which plants will tolerate which beds, has been the most basic and yet most significant lesson I’ve learned.

What would you say is your gardening style? Do you favour a particular aesthetic?

I’d love to say yes, but the truth is I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to plants. If I see a beautiful plant, I have to have it, which leads to a sort of pick’n’mix approach to design. I can’t be trusted in a garden centre or nursery: I will fill the car boot with plants, whether there’s anywhere for them to go once they get home or not. As a result, my garden is a jungle-ish mishmash of styles, though I do love each individual plant, and the overall look that they create together. One thing’s for sure: you will struggle to find bare soil anywhere in my garden. Well, except for in the lawn - the friendly local foxes see to that most years.

Were you one of these people who found gardening deeply relaxing during lockdown?

Absolutely not. I find gardening to be at least as stressful as it is satisfying. Most of the time, all I see when I step out into the garden is a never-ending list of jobs - one that I seem never to be able to stay on top of. But yes, I do find the actual act of tending to the garden to be a very focussed, quiet and mindful experience. And when I do remind myself to just stop and really look - not at what needs to be done, but at what’s already there to admire - I do experience an upswell of satisfaction.

So what do you hope to bring to the world of horticulture?

I don’t claim to be an expert when it comes to gardening. Not even close. What I am is passionate, and infinitely curious - something that fuelled my career as a magazine features writer. There is so much to learn out there when it comes to horticulture, not just in terms of garden design and maintenance, but every aspect of appreciating and caring for the natural world, in whatever small ways we can.

My contribution to the wider conversation will be in the form of a twice-weekly newsletter. Using my background and skills as a journalist, I hope to speak to a broad cohort of horticulturalists, from rewilders to guerilla gardeners, conservationists to composters, hydroponic farmers to coastal foragers, industry veterans to radical thinkers, and anyone with a unique or interesting perspective in this essential, vital and fascinating field. I hope to foster and nurture my readers’ love of nature and natural spaces, whether or not they even have a garden of their own.

And finally, what one thing in your garden right now is bringing you the most pleasure?

Without question, the Salvia ‘Amistad’ plants scattered all around the garden, which I bought as tiny little plugs earlier this year. We’re well into December, and still they’re covered in tall spikes of decadently purple flowers. Not a very Christmasy palette, but I sort of love that about them. They’re only “meant” to grow up to about 1.2m, but one of mine in a part-sunny spot is towering up at around 2m, peeking nosily over the fence into our neighbours’ garden.

For more information about Dan’s work, visit danmasoliver.com. Or follow this link to learn more about The Earthworm and to read the full archive.

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Before you go

The Earthworm is more than just a newsletter - it is a community of likeminded gardeners, plant lovers and nature nerds - so please do get in touch. I’d love to hear from you!

If you’re enjoying these interviews, or even if you aren’t, just hit reply (email) or let me know in the comments below (web). I try my best to respond to every message. I’m also always open to suggestions for future interviewees, so keep ‘em coming.

Thank you, and happy growing!