Growing knowledge, one season at a time.

From a neglected back garden to a decade of growing — and a site built to share it all.

My gardening story starts with a dead rosebush and about £40 of overconfidence. In 2013, freshly moved into a terraced house with a strip of neglected garden at the back, I decided — with very little knowledge and a great deal of enthusiasm — that I was going to grow my own food. I had no inherited gardening wisdom and no real plan beyond a vague sense that this was something I wanted to do.

The first two seasons were a lesson in humility. Tomatoes went into heavy clay without amendment. Brassicas bolted the moment the weather shifted. Slugs took everything else. But somewhere in the mess of it — in the odd thrill of pulling a beetroot that had actually worked — I became completely hooked.

Garden Abodee started as a personal record. I began writing down what I was doing — season by season, failure by failure — partly to keep track and partly because I couldn’t find a site that gave me practical, honest advice for someone growing in a modest space. What I wanted to read didn’t exist, so I built it.

Everything published here is written by me, Emily Bell. There is no team, no ghostwritten posts, and no sponsored recommendations dressed up as genuine advice. When I recommend a variety, a method, or a piece of kit, it is because I have grown it or used it myself — often across multiple seasons.

What you’ll find on Garden Abodee is practical, experience-based gardening guidance across six topics: vegetable growing, indoor plants, garden design, food forests, DIY garden builds, and sustainable growing. I write about failure as readily as success, because that is where the real learning happens.