TV Appearance: "Springtime On The Farm" on C5

Container Pond Offer Extended for Easter

First Look.. Cloudscape: A Year On

A year ago this week, the very first indoor flower show in the UK opened, The RHS Urban Show. I had the opportunity to create 7 gardens at the show working with Notcutts, Plant Manchester, North West In Bloom and the Manchester Metropolitan University’s Rise Programme.

We designed 4 balconies, a shady container garden, an allotment space within a housing development and showcased how a development can have a mixed use communal space, with a planting scheme that encourages residents within the development to garden. Plant Manchester currently do this day to day, working with Noma, a developer in Manchester city centre.

The allotment and communal gardens were relocated to the Co-op Academy New
Islington, where forest school teacher, Claudia Mirazi has overseen the garden. Every student in the school (400+ children) have had a class outside using the garden. On Weds, across my social media platforms, I’ll be sharing a little more about how the children use the garden, it’s expansion and the positive affect it has had on the students and teachers.

There are still some tickets available for an event I am holding this week, where we will discuss Cloudscape but will also be sharing some of my findings from my Churchill Fellowship research trip. I travelled across Europe & Asia (China/Singapore) studying how to make our towns and cities greener. I was able to find real examples of Cloudscape in practice and will share some of my findings including, aquaponic community gardens, roof gardens in Hong Kong, urban planning in China & sponge parks/cities. I'll share how we can improve urban greening in the UK during the talk at the Manchester Museum, on the 16th April.

You can book your free ticket below:

🎟: https://lnkd.in/exhHqXxP

Cloudscape: Rain Or Shine

Following on from the success of Cloudscape at the RHS Urban Show. I can exclusively announce to you guys, that I am returning to Manchester Metropolitan University to work on another project with the Rise team. This time, I am taking a group of students through the process of building an exhibit at the Manchester Flower Festival. The exhibits will then be relocated to a community group in Manchester. More to come on the special relocation area in a couple of weeks.

The students have a 2 hour session with me every Wednesday until the opening day at the festival. Their exhibits will be based off of my research trip and they will be finding ways to adapt my research to tackle issues such as flood management and draught tolerant planting here in Manchester. Last week was our first session and attendance to the session was great, with even more students planning to join us this week.

I’ll be keeping you up to date with Cloudscape: Rain or Shine across all my platforms and here in my newsletter. The Manchester Flower Festival starts the second bank holiday in May, 23rd - 26th 2025. It’s a free event, which takes over the city centre bringing trails, floral displays and workshops right across the city

The Manchester Flower Festival:

https://cityco.com/the-manchester-flower-festival/

Balcony Garden Tour

Now you know, I like to show you my garden at it’s best but also it’s absolute worst! I think it’s really important that if I encourage people to start gardening, they see all the highs and lows. Gardening isn’t picture perfect like Instagram would have you believe.

So in my balcony tour, you get to take a look at the progress the Cloud Garden has made over the past 4 months. It’s a complete and utter transformation. Some plants in the Struggle Bus area have survived.. others have unalived themselves. Just wait until you meet Leona, my bleeding heart. Reading some of the comments on the video really makes me smile as I see some of my subscribers feeling inspired and re-motivated! So I thought I would share it here with you guys too, just in case some of you needed a push this weekend.

Flower Show Season Begins Next Week..

Flower show season is nearly upon us. Over the years, I have created a flower show series. If you are a designer wanting to exhibit, love plants, need inspiration or are interested in the inner workings of flower shows, this series is the one for you.

I cover all sorts of things from in-depth interviews with designers, to gain their insights into their creations, small space gardening ideas and breaking down some of the big boy show gardens into smaller chunks, to show how we can achieve the same looks at home. Now it’s time to have your say, let me know what you are most interested in seeing and help me shape the series this year:

Springtime On The Farm

Earlier this year, I met up with the charismatic presenter, JB Gill in Moss Side. JB Gill may be well known for being a member of one of our favourite boy bands, JLS but did you know that he has his own farm? Even crazier, as we were talking in between takes, we discovered that we are both from Croydon!! From that point onwards, I knew he was gonna love his trip to Moss Side.

I took him on a tour of Cloudy Alley. For those of you, who don’t know, Cloudy Alley is the home of my relocated RHS feature garden from the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show in 2023. It was an ginnel (alleyway down south) garden. The goal was to show him, how unused grey spaces in the city can be used to grow food and be productive urban farms. We also met up with the fantastic Gemma & Yasmine who have been taking care of the garden meticulously ever since the relocation.

The show airs 15/04/25 at 8pm on Channel 5 or watch on catch up here:

A Massive Thank You…

A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support my houseplant and seed swap event. It’s getting to the point, where I need some volunteers to help me as this event continues to grow. I barely had time to take any photos, we were busy for the entire event. It’s really special to see something that you created 5 years ago, grow and evolve into a staple part of peoples month. Out of everything I have achieved, this event is the one that probably means the most. It’s hard to know what you contribute to others through a phone or on a tv. Perhaps, because I can see in real time the joy gardening can bring.

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to place your order for your container pond. The discount valid until the 18th but if you order within the next few days, you should be able to get your ponds in time for the Easter weekend.

Use the discount code below to get 10% off the container ponds, with or without a barrel. You can also use your code on the individual marginal perennials, now available on the site. The best part is.. Postage is FREE!!

Discount Code: Springtime

10% off valid from 28/03/25 - 18/04/25. UK only

Enough rambling from me! If you made it this far, well done! Have a great weekend and Happy Easter!

Jason x

Website: www.cloudgardeneruk.co.uk

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