Jamie Butterworth is a plant expert, one of the country’s youngest commercial nursery owners, TV presenter and author. His most recent book, What Grows Together: Fail-Safe Combinations for Every Garden (Dorling Kindersley, £22) is out now. Here, he tells us more about the book, his inspirations, and what he's up to at the moment.
Why did you write this book? The idea was inspired by Jamie Oliver's Five Ingredients book. I’m his perfect audience – I am time poor and like cooking and eating but have no idea of what ingredients to buy, or how to put them together. Jamie's got such a beautiful way of simplifying and demystifying cooking and making it accessible to everybody and I wanted to do a similar book for gardening.
On a sunny weekend, I imagine a lot of people go to the garden centre with the intention of buying plants to make their garden look beautiful, whereas the reality is, when they get there (or go online), there are so many different plants and so many complications around what grows together before you even get to what will look good together.
You may also like:
- Who is Jamie Butterworth?
- Monty Don to design a dog-friendly garden at RHS Chelsea 2025
- Watch a tour around Monty Don's RHS Chelsea Flower Show dog garden with Jamie Butterworth
- Alan Titchmarsh: We should be buying local and gardening organically
- TV gardener Carol Klein on her life to date and what comes next
- Gardeners' World presenter Arit Anderson – from fashion bunny to gardener
I pitched the idea six years ago, but we couldn't work out how to shoot it. With a cookery book you can hire a kitchen and a team and rattle through photographing the recipes, but you can’t do that with plants. In the past, it was possible to get around the problem by using images of close-ups of the individual components, but that doesn’t give the sense of scale. Or they’re put together in a pot.
In the end, we bought loads of 1m x 1m containers and planted all the combinations in them when they were ready. We built a stage with a hole in it and dropped each of the combinations into the hole to photograph them. I have the luxury of owning a nursery, which massively helped! We ended up with 67 different plant combinations that I've grown myself over the years.
The book has the ingredients on the left, and the finished ‘recipe’ on the right. All the combinations are good for growing in pots as well as borders - we wanted to make them accessible to everybody, whether they’re on a balcony in Manchester or an estate in the Cotswolds.
What would you say you learned from writing the book? Writing a book is a lot harder than you'd ever think. I started working with Monty [Don, on the Dog Garden at Chelsea] around the same time, and he was able to guide me in the practicalities of blocking out time for writing. He writes first thing in the morning, but I need to get my day going first. I love the Lake District, so I blocked out two or three days at a time, and wrote the book there.
What one piece of advice from the book would you most like to share? The book features combinations of two to seven plants. I think my favourites are the simplest. The combination of Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and Agastache ‘Blackadder’ is really strong - sometimes you just need two plants and they will look good for a long period of time.
The Lake District is the only place where I can genuinely switch off. I mostly go walking but my favourite garden there is Lowther Castle
What do you love reading about? I'm not a huge reader - I listen to audio books and podcasts because I travel a lot for filming. I enjoy reading books about walking. My favourite author is Alfred Wainwright, who wrote the Wainwright Walks series about the Lake District. I think he has the most beautiful way of writing of anybody that I've ever read. The last book I read was Monty Don’s The Prickotty Bush – the story of his first garden.
What first sparked your interest in gardening? I was nine, at home in Wakefield and Monty was sowing some seeds on Gardeners’ World. I asked my Mum if I could sow some seeds in yoghurt pots. I still remember that feeling of excitement – it was real-life magic to take something as small as a pinprick and watch it grow. The following year, I read on the back of a packet that there were 1,000 seeds in it. I thought, if I can sell 1,000 of these at a pound each from one packet, I'm going to be a millionaire by the time I’m 12. At 14, I realised you could garden for a living when someone from Askham Bryan college came to our school.
The reality is that along with 40% of the population, I rent. So if you create a garden, you’re creating it for somebody else
What’s your own garden like? I recently moved from a house with a tiny courtyard – where I had terracotta pots filled with drought-tolerant plants like grasses, agapanthus, osmanthus and phillyrea – to one with an even smaller courtyard. I live in Windsor, and there’s only one person there who has the luxury of a nice garden, and that’s the King. I have my nursery and I’m there from 7am every day, so I get to scratch my gardening itch there, and I create gardens for other people.
Ultimately, I desperately want my own garden, and I’ve never had one. I've just applied for an allotment. The reality is that along with, I think, 40% of the population, I rent so if you create a garden, you’re creating it for somebody else.
Gardening is never about the here and now – you very seldom stand in your garden and think ‘I’ve nailed it’ – you're always thinking three months ahead. It’s the excitement and anticipation of what comes next, and thinking, how can I make this better? As a renter, you're deprived of that because you don't know how long you're going to be living in the property. I surround myself with plants at home because they make me happy and calm, but I don't consider it gardening in the same way I would if I had a garden of my own.
You’re dealing with a living product, and sometimes plants just die. I always see it as an opportunity to plant something else.
What are your biggest garden mistakes? There have been hundreds over the years, but the last big one was an apple tree going into Monty's Dog Garden at Chelsea [the garden Jamie designed with Monty Don at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show]. We had found it in Germany, and had it shipped over, but at the beginning of Chelsea, it was so dry and so hot and the tree just got stressed. It got downy mildew. We hadn’t done a preventative spray because that’s not the sort of the thing we do. We had a back-up apple tree, so we took that to the show, and that got downy mildew too – and that was a mistake and we should have learned from the first one. The trees will be fine - they're back at the nursery. Instead we planted a medlar.
We also had loads of baptisias for the garden. We check the plants every night, every day, from February through till the show. But we came in one morning and they had all gone black. I still don't know what it was - I must get to the bottom of that. You’re dealing with a living product, and sometimes plants just die. I always see it as an opportunity to plant something else.
WHAT GROWS TOGETHER: FAIL-SAFE PLANT COMBINATIONS FOR EVERY GARDEN
by Jamie Butterworth DK, £22
ISBN 978-0241723074
Do you have a guilty gardening secret? I have a houseplant I bought at Wisley when I was a student, and it’s followed me everywhere. In my last book I wrote about how I only water it twice a year. But after a week in our new house, it started going brown, and I said it must be stressed because of the heat. My wife said: “Well, did you water it?” It turns out that when I was at Wisley, my housemates watered it, and subsequently my wife had been doing so.
I've just started filming for BBC Gardeners’ World, which is a dream come true. It’s quite an exciting point in my career.
What gardens or landscapes do you visit for inspiration? I love the Lake District. It’s the only place where I can genuinely switch off - there’s something about being surrounded by mountains that makes me feel safe. I mostly go walking, but my favourite garden there is Lowther Castle. Dan Pearson’s planting gives me goosebumps.
Some of the nicest planting I’ve seen recently was Tom Stuart-Smith’s at RHS Garden Bridgewater – because it's been so dry this year it has come into its own. It’s not often you see dry gravel planting looking so good.
I really like Scampston, which bounces between the formality of the topiary and the walled garden through to the softness of the perennial planting by Piet Oudolf.
I surround myself with plants at home because they make me happy and calm, but I don't consider it gardening in the same way I would if I had a garden of my own
What else are you up to at the moment? My nursery, Form Plants, is in the process of taking over a perennial nursery in Chobham. It's been going for 70 years and is a real piece of history. It means our current site will be able to focus on trees, shrubs and topiary, and the other on perennials. I’ve reached the point now where the nursery runs without me so I can focus on other things.
I've got a series of interviews and tours around the book and I've just started filming for BBC Gardeners’ World, which is a dream come true. It’s quite an exciting point in my career.
Form hasn’t had the easiest of journeys over the last five years – we very nearly went bankrupt two years ago, but we got through it. I think that’s brought me perspective on a lot of things. I love going to work - I’m very lucky.