Known for her picturesque cottage garden and the wonderful wildlife that visits it, Ramona Jones' plot looks as though it belongs in a Beatrix Potter tale.
Writer, photographer and gardener Ramona (aka Monalogue) shares this with their thousands of social media followers, and has appeared on BBC Two's Gardeners' World and ITV's Alan Titchmarsh's Gardening Club.
But Ramona's south west-based garden is more than just a beautiful space – it's a haven for wildlife, and it became a sanctuary during their late autism diagnosis. To celebrate Ramona's latest book, Growing, we caught up with her about life behind the lens.
Congratulations on the release on your book, Growing. What can people expect from it?
Growing follows a year in my cottage garden and offers a blend of practical gardening advice and reflective observations. I hope it gives beginner gardeners the tools to get started while alleviating some of the pressures of perfectionism and the fear of failure. It’s a very visual book, and I hope this gives readers a sense of calm and escapism.
How would you describe your style of gardening?
I would say my style of gardening is rather human: sometimes I don’t finish things, it’s a little rough around the edges, and it isn’t perfect by any means. But if you get to know it, my garden has so much depth and beauty. I love the wilderness – growing clovers, daisies, and even taller wildflowers like cow parsley in my lawn.
I intermix these wild things with the curated. I’ve added thousands of crocuses, snake’s head fritillaries and daffodils to the grass in areas I call ‘mini-meadows'. Conveniently, the wildlife loves this too, and the garden is a wonderful tapestry of life.
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You often describe your garden as a 'cottage garden'. Has the idea of creating a cottage garden always been appealing?
I grew up in a small terraced cottage, and my sister and I planted trees there when we were very tiny (more accurately, my parents planted them, but they always insisted we had one each). My sister had an apple tree, and I had a birch tree. The garden was quite informal: forget-me-nots and the occasional nettle would self-seed freely around the edges.
We lived there until I was nine or ten, and there was something about the space that felt really safe. We would play under our trees and hang hammocks between them in the school holidays. The chaos of the cottage garden had such a friendly feel to it, and that’s something I always want to maintain in my own garden.
Any tips for new gardeners on how to embrace a wildlife-friendly garden?
The good news is that it’s very easy. Mess is best, and the wildlife often thanks us for not tidying up. You don’t necessarily need to buy anything fancy. Instead of taking your tree cuttings to the recycling centre, leave them in piles around the edges of the garden. If you’re a tidier person, you can tuck them out of sight underneath hedges and shrubs. A simple stack of logs can support so many different creatures at different points in their life cycle.
Your flock of ducks are often seen on your social media – why did you decide to get ducks, and how are you finding looking after them?
Our garden once acted as part of a shared smallholding for our row of cottages, and when our particular boundary was drawn up, we inherited the old stone pigsty. It felt wasteful to use the building for storing tools, and having seen the joy that my grandad’s former flock of geese brought him, we thought we would welcome in some pets of our own – only this time with runner ducks. Collecting eggs from the garden is such an easy bounty, but most importantly, they are incredibly entertaining pets – albeit exceptionally messy.
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In Growing, you talk about the overlap between having your own garden and discovering your autistic identity. Did having that space and being able to garden help with that process?
I was diagnosed as autistic shortly after we moved in, so I was learning how to garden and how to make sense of my autistic identity simultaneously. It was a very spiky process coming to terms with the fact that I was autistic. In many ways, it was a huge relief, but it also meant combing through my past and reflecting on mental health battles as a young person that could have been prevented.
The garden gave me a safe space to work through those feelings. I could rest there, quietly reflect, take my anger out on the heavier jobs, or completely distract myself by learning about gardening. I am so grateful for how the space supported me in such a layered way.
In your new book, you also talk about ‘glimmers’, which in the autistic community is a moment of intense sensory joy. Do you find them important in gardening?
I think when people think of autism, they often focus on sensory pain and meltdowns. These are very real, but the other side of deeply feeling and experiencing things is that we can have profoundly joyous sensory experiences too. Lots of people refer to these as ‘glimmers'.
I've learned to seek them out as often as I can as a means of resting. In my garden, I usually find them in colour – the soft purple of a crocus petal in the afternoon sun, or the pale yellows and pinks in a hellebore. They're a huge antidote to the sensory chaos of the wider world.
What are you most proud of in your garden?
I don’t know if I can take full responsibility for their presence, but I am so in love with the wildlife in the garden. The space has taught me to see beauty in all forms – from the tiniest ants scurrying around the stone walls to the incredible statue-like presence of a stag beetle (on the one occasion I have been lucky enough to spot one).
Watching leaf-cutting bees cut perfect circles in the leaves of my rose plants never fails to amaze me. All of these creatures make me feel like a small part of a larger network, and I realise that many of the modern stressors I carry on my shoulders don’t matter at all.
Any gardening regrets?
I have made many mistakes in my garden! Most of them I’ve come to value as lessons, but I do wish I hadn’t planted hundreds of garish red tulips. I placed them so carefully, hoping they would return every year. Naturally, they did – and I can’t stand the colour.
Growing by Ramona Jones (published by Ebury Press) is available now.
Main image: Ramona Jones, aka Monalogue, in her garden/Aaron Gibson and Ramona Jones
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