Five minutes with Claire Mitchell, The Garden Editor

Claire Mitchell is founder of The Garden Editor, a company that specialises in improving people’s gardens, without costing the Earth. The Garden Editor brings sustainable, affordable horticultural advice and editing services to the modern way of living.

1. Who are you and why did you start The Garden Editor?

I’m Claire, a plant geek with a passion for sustainable, practical living. I started The Garden Editor two years ago, but it’s been a long time in the making! When I was in my 20s and I wanted to get better at gardening, there was no one I could find who could help me in a relatable, non-scary way. I studied horticulture in my spare time from a busy day job in climate change and renewable energy and took it from there.

2. What’s your advice to others starting their own business?!

Get a plan, as rough as you like, and just do it. Build supporters and cheerleaders. Work out a budget and stick to it. There is a lot you can spend on as a small business, but the basics are cheap.

3. What does a brief day in your life look like?!

Incredibly varied, which I love! It typically involves some design work, either on layouts and overviews, or on plant research, at my desk. Then it could be visits to nurseries and suppliers or emails and calls with them to sort out ordering and budgets. I’m also out and about in people’s gardens 3 or 4 times a week planting up, advising on maintenance, or giving gardening lessons. I do a radio show which means popping into a recording studio too. On a well-blended day, no part of my brain or body doesn’t get a workout!

4. Who is a person you look up to and why?

My aunt, a Scottish midwife who fell in love on a trans-Canadian railway, got off in the Rocky Mountains and started a multi-racial adoptive family in the middle of nowhere. She gently but powerfully challenged the status quo by how she lived, and was the best observer of nature I have ever known.

5. Name your biggest professional highlight?

I could write about big moments at flower shows full of awards, but for me it’s when clients react with such joy and happiness when they see their garden transformed – especially if I can incorporate something personal to them and their family.

6. Favourite book and why?

The writings of Etty Hillesum. She was a Dutch young woman killed by the Nazis. She writes about the increasing restrictions on her life as a young, outgoing liberal girl

about town. As the external freedoms are reduced and removed, her internal freedom and spiritual life blossoms. It’s a very powerful read. Think Anne Frank for

grownups.

7. Favourite podcast and why?

I’m going to dodge that one, sorry. There’s sooo many to chose from! Cautionary Tales and More or Less for science things. Talking Heads, Gardening with the RHS

and Plant Stories for gardening geekery. Checks and Balances, Newscast and Drum Tower for politics (US, UK and China). Feel Better, Live More for general health and

wellbeing. The Rest is History and You’re Dead to me for history.

8. What’s the one thing you try and do every day for yourself?

ONAWNAH. This stands for being Outside, Not at Work, Not at Home. A lot of my work takes me outside, but I still make time to be in the outdoors with my dog or family not being “on duty”.

9. What’s your guilty pleasure?!

A daytime nap accompanied by a packet of biscuits – the more chocolately the better - and some bland TV burbling in the background.

10. Favourite holiday destination?

Anything that is an island. I’m obsessed. Even better if it’s in an archipelago.

11. What is your earliest child memory?

Seeing Live Aid on TV and having some sort of realisation that the environment I lived in was not the world that everyone on the planet lived in.

12. What do you think is the key to happiness?

True happiness is about contentment. Find ways to increase your self-knowledge about what makes you feel very alive, and doing more of that, is key to this.

13. Window or aisle seat?

Window. I’m an incurable looker-outerer.

14. What’s a super power you wish you had?

Something to make there be more hours in the day like Hermoine has in Harry Potter. There’s so much living to be done!

15. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

Product over perfection. Often people fear taking a leap or completing something because it’s not quite perfect. Behind that there’s often a fear of failure dressed up

in perfectionist tendencies.

16. What’s the number one mistake people make in their gardens?!

Having too narrow borders or beds. My landscapers now know not to design “death boxes for plants” as I call them. Give your plants space to grow and breathe and they

will pay you back enormously.