Fiona Cumberpatch, Freelance Journalist

30/12/2025

A new Substack has landed.
I’m writing about my garden inspirations, from wisps of childhood memories, to more recent encounters. Why do certain gardens stir me (it’s never the most grand or expensive ones) and how can I get that feeling in my own 12x5m plot…

22/12/2025

I didn’t have to travel far to write this one for LandScape magazine Artist Karen Neale lives a few streets away from me in Stamford. She has an incredible talent for drawing and painting buildings and cityscapes. She’s done this all over the world, but she holds a special affection for the Georgian limestone buildings, spires and streets of her home town.

09/12/2025

I’ve been doing this job for a v-e-r-y long time, but flexing the pen on a subject that inspires me never gets old. I loved writing features about winter gardens in two January issues. For LandScape, I spoke to the owners of a wonderful old walled garden in Devon. In autumn and winter, the huge beds of perennials remain uncut, creating a mass of stems and seedheads. Beauty in decay. That’s a theme I explored further for Garden Answers. How to find satisfaction in the quiet garden and embrace the turning of the year, even as the rain lashes down and the wind gusts.
LandScape magazine Garden Answers

19/11/2025

My latest Substack has just gone live. It’s free to subscribe and arrives in your inbox fortnightly.

The unexpected pleasures of a courtyard container garden

05/11/2025

Something new! Finally, I’ve started a Substack. Just incase you don’t know, it’s a blog that’s delivered direct to your inbox. Free to subscribe. I’ll be writing it fortnightly. I’m modelling it on the Zine that I published during lockdown. It will be like a mini magazine with growing ideas, gardens to visit and lust over, inspiring plant people, book reviews and favourite finds. And not just words - lots of photos, paintings and colour. The aim is to create a ray of light in a sometimes dark world. Hope you can join me over at RootBudFlower.

Why gardening always makes things better

23/07/2025

Some of my features now appearing in summer issues after a busy few months. The world of legumes for Kew magazine (and why we should all be growing beans), travel to the historic Suffolk village of Lavenham and the story behind a dreamy garden in Sussex, both for LandScape.
In addition, my website www.fionacumberpatch.com is refreshed, updated and I’ve added a shop for purchasing cards and tea towels (new designs are on the way!).

10/06/2025

It was a pleasure speaking to mother and daughter team Sweetpea Bear on their lovely podcast Not Just A Garden. They asked me about my ideal garden, my favourite plants and the story behind my bijoux plot appearing on Gardeners’ World. We covered a lot of ground (🌿) including my passion for walled gardens and why it has to be a glass of kir royale in the hammock of dreams.
Podcast is available now.

Fiona Cumberpatch was on Gardeners' World 2025 episode 1 with her small but perfectly formed urban cottage style flower garden. She joins us for a Chit-Chat and, as well as hearing about her dream garden, we talk gardening magazines versus fashions mags, Hügelkultur, how to get a kg of Tumbling Tom tomatoes, and Fiona's superb ethos of “just give it a go” when it comes to gardening. We also tried out her recipe recommendation for using up tomatoes and it was DELICIOUS!

Hear the full episode 33 on your favourite podcasting app or click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/not-just-a-garden/id1729233309?i=1000712204706

09/06/2025

Work has taken me to Suffolk three times in the last few weeks for various magazines and articles. Suffolk is one of my favourite counties, and it looks particularly beautiful in early summer. I’ll share the features once they are published.

20/05/2025

Just some of the people behind the plants and gardens at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. It’s always a whirlwind of a press day, but I try to take time to talk to the makers, the growers and the experts on site and hear their stories, sowing the seeds for future features.
My photos are sorted, a bumper blog post written (www.fionacumberpatch.com) and I’ve just had time to paint the new stripy rose launched by David Austin. 😅

08/05/2025

This was very unexpected. Thanks to Genus for featuring me in their online magazine, and to Joff Elphick for the interview. I hope to keep waving the flag for small space gardens, growing in containers and greening the grey.

Was Fiona Cumberpatch destined to become a gardener and garden writer? With parents living ‘The Good Life’ in their traditional Cambridgeshire cottage during the 1970’s, and grandparents maintaining their classic English garden, Fiona fondly remembers “dahlias, pristine dahlias on either sid...

02/05/2025

Off to beautiful Suffolk to give my first talk on container gardening, at the invitation of Orford Gardening Club. Such a beautiful venue in the Town Hall. It was a great evening, with an appreciative and kind audience.
I’ve always loved Orford, with its unusual setting overlooking the Ness, a long, shingle spit with eerie relics of top secret Cold War weapons testing buildings on the horizon. I know the area from holidays, and to be asked to speak here was a real pleasure.
I am keen to do more talks, and I welcome interest from gardening groups, ideally within an hour’s drive of Stamford.

13/04/2025

Last week's press trip to Antwerp was fascinating. I was a guest of Visit Flanders and I was invited to experience the horticultural heritage and botanical history of the city. We travelled on Eurostar via Brussels, arriving at Antwerp's splendid station at lunchtime. Our first destination was the home of the artist Peter Paul Rubens. The focus was on the newly restored garden, which has been completely reimagined using historical references gleaned from books and documents held by the nearby Plantin-Moretus Museum, and from Rubens' paintings. Curator Klara Alen talked us through her painstaking research. Later, we saw some of the incredible 17th century botanical books which Rubens would have had in his personal library. The garden is just coming into bloom, with tulips, euphorbia and crown imperials putting on a particularly beautiful display.
I love walled gardens more than any other kind, so it was an absolute treat to be invited to landscape architect and designer Ronald van der Hilst's private Hortus Conclusis in the heart of the old town. A truly secret garden, we stepped through an ordinary door into the most amazing expansive space, filled with masses of tulips, shrubs and perennials. A table was set under the trees in the sun, and here Ronald and his partner Marcel hosted us for lunch (including tulip petal appetisers). Ronald told us about the seven year transformation of the garden.
It was such a magical place, I really didn't want to leave!