The Cottage Garden Collection

Jul 10

The Story.

I am very much a beginner gardener - or one that is at the start of my journey in learning to grow my own vegetables.

I have always admired and enjoyed looking at beautiful gardens and cottages - very much like something out of Peter Rabbit or any Beatrix Potter book. Lots of colours, textures and forms and the odd creature or animal popping through. It always seemed idyllic and a relaxing place to be.

Then I began trying to grow my own vegetables… In such a short amount of time, I have definitely experienced my fair share of setbacks and I’m sure there are still plenty to come - I tell myself that I am learning through trial and error!

So far I have experienced sheep discovering my crops. Butterflies sneaking in under netting. Slugs. More slugs. Rabbits. Farm dogs digging holes and even my horse discovering the carrots. Through this, I’ve discovered raised veggie gardens, pods to protect, eggshells, and have since learnt to always check the gate…

Anyway - it was partway through these adventures that I realised I enjoyed the challenge of trying to grow my own produce! It was then that I was lucky enough to have a dream creative brief where Alex Monroe Jewellery in the UK reached out to me after connecting through entering their jewellery design competition ‘Design for Hope’ in 2022, to see if I would like to draw some illustrations for their beautiful potager jewellery collection. I of course said yes! I was even so excited I forgot to mention I was based in NZ and went ahead with the 2:30am Skype meeting… It was all very much well worth it though as this continued to grow my love for gardening and drawing all things garden/nature-related. As all of the subject matter was very much of interest to me with its Potager garden theme. It even stemmed into a silk scarf collaboration with Alex Monroe and Heti Colours. A project that to this day is one of my favourite design collaboration projects!

So here we are, around 2 years later and I am still drawing and thinking about cottage gardens and all the creatures that inhabit them! So I thought I would release a small collection of five A5 landscape ink illustration collages to hopefully lead to more nature-inspired pieces to come soon.

Each one aims to convey it’s own quirky story or adventure - they can be viewed as individual stories or scenes that can then lead onto one another. I hope you enjoy them and please reach out to let me know if you have a favourite or can relate to some of my beginner gardener misadventures - I’d love to hear them. I am of course always open to tips and advice too! X