MJW

Guides & Resources

The working year, written down.

The practice runs at close to full capacity, and only so many gardens can have me in them. These guides are how the same knowledge reaches everyone else: what gets tackled, in what order, and what it costs you to get the timing wrong, set out for a private garden in plain English, by someone who is still out doing the job.

In season now · The Bulb Guide

The bulb year, month by month.

One line from the guide's calendar. The guide carries the full page behind every one: what to plant, at what depth, and what catches people out.

If I had one autumn and a modest budget: five hundred crocus through the lawn, two hundred daffodils in three long drifts, a hundred alliums behind the geraniums, fifty snowdrops in the green, and one deep pot of layered bulbs by the back door. Under nine hundred bulbs, one long weekend of work, and something in flower every week from January to June.

The full guide is listed below ↓

Featured · In season now

The Bulb Guide

UK Bulb Planting Guide · A4 PDF

August is ordering month. The catalogues are out, the good varieties never see September, and most bulb disappointments are decided now, months before a trowel comes out. Twenty pages on buying, depth, spacing and timing, from eighteen years of planting bulbs in Cambridgeshire clay and Cambridge college lawns. Where the guide gives a number, it is the number I use on site, not the number on the packet.

The quick reference. Depth, spacing, timing and how many per square metre, for sixteen bulbs, on one page for the shed wall.
Michael's Twelve. One bulb for every month of the year, with the case for each. Plant all twelve and the garden is never without a flower.
The craft. Bulbs in pots, through the border, in drifts through grass, and what changes at five hundred bulbs and above.
What goes wrong. Squirrels, blind daffodils, tulip fire, and how to head them off at planting.

“A bulb is a flower with its own packed lunch: everything it needs for next year is already inside it. Your job is mostly not to ruin it.”From page three of the guide

£9.98 Instant download · 20 pages · Print at home

About the price of twenty decent tulip bulbs, and it will save you many times that in ones that come back.

Buy on Etsy Secure checkout through Etsy. Files available the moment payment clears, and re-downloadable at any time.

Also available · The Garden Year

A garden year, month by month.

One note from each month. The planner carries the full programme behind every one.

Written for UK conditions throughout. Nothing has been converted from an American calendar.

The full planner is listed below ↓

Also available

The Garden Year

UK Garden Maintenance Planner · A4 PDF

Most gardening advice tells you what to do. Very little tells you when, or what it costs you to get the timing wrong. This is my working year, in the order I actually run it: the same jobs, the same warnings, the same habits I use on the gardens in my care. Consider it your accountability partner, twelve months a year. Gardens compound. Do the right small thing at the right time, month after month, and the results take care of themselves.

The month ahead. What is happening in the garden, and why it matters.
Priority tasks. A tick list, roughly in order of importance.
What to watch for. The pests, diseases and weather that catch people out.
Michael's tip. One thing from professional practice you will not find on a seed packet.
Reflect. One question, because gardens reward people who look.
Plant of the month. Twelve plants worth knowing, one for every month.

“Use it on a Sunday morning with a cup of tea. Tick things off. Scribble in the margins. By December it should be dog-eared and muddy. That’s the plan working.”From the welcome page

£9.98 Instant download · 22 pages · Print at home

About the price of a tray of bedding plants, for the plan that runs the whole year.

Buy on Etsy Secure checkout through Etsy. Files available the moment payment clears, and re-downloadable at any time.

Beyond the twelve months

The pages you will keep coming back to.

Five reference pages that sit behind the calendar and make the rest of it work.

Know Your Frost Dates

The page that makes every other page work. Record your own dates and every timing in the planner shifts to fit your garden rather than an average one.

The Cutback Cheat Sheet

What to prune and when, on a single page. The most asked question in gardening, answered.

The Sunday Hour

Only got an hour this week? Exactly where it goes, season by season.

My Planting Record

What you planted, where it went, what it cost and how it did.

Notes For Next Year

Close the year properly, and start the next one ahead.

Dates bend to your garden

Not the other way round. The frost page shows how to shift everything for a mild coast, a city centre or a frost pocket in the north.

Your download contains three files. The full colour edition, 22 pages, for reading on a tablet or annotating in GoodNotes, Notability or Xodo. The printer friendly edition, formatted to save ink while keeping every checklist crisp on paper. And a Read Me First guide covering downloading, saving and printing. Prints at A4 for the UK and Europe, or US Letter for North America.

The wider collection

Still in the workshop.

Each one written between site visits, so they arrive when they are genuinely ready.

In development

Premium Garden Design Pack

The working method behind a designed garden. Survey to concept to planting plan, with the templates and plant schedules used on live projects.

Coming soon

MJW Garden Guides

Short, deep guides on single subjects. Roses and lawns next, each covering selection, planting and the long-term care that decides how they mature.

In writing

The Book

A longer piece on managing a garden across decades rather than seasons, drawn from private estate work in Cambridgeshire.

Beyond the page

Some gardens need more than a guide.

If your property calls for a designed scheme or ongoing estate management, that work is taken on with a small number of clients at any one time.

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