How Much Does A Garden Writer Make?

garden writer

Garden writerAnnie Gatti explains how she entered the world of garden writing and offers tips for other budding gardening writers.

How did you become a garden writer?

I came to garden writing mid career. After university – I studied English at Oxford – I became a copy editor and then a researcher at the Reader's Digest. My husband and I took a sabbatical when our first child was born and lived in the West of Ireland where I took long walks across the bog, garnering material for a nature column for a national newspaper. Feature writing and information books for children followed, and then I edited the gardening pages of The Times for several years. When I left, I realised that garden writing and editing had become my world.

Was this always the route you wanted to take?

When I started editing books I swore I would never work on gardening or cookery titles! As an undergraduate I thought I would like to make documentaries but then publishing came my way.

What qualifications and experience do you need to become a garden writer?

Good garden writing is like any good writing, and you are mainly judged by your work, not whether you have qualifications. But a journalistic training is very helpful if you want to write for national newspapers and trade titles, and some require horticultural qualifications such as RHS Level 2. I trained on the job, and took a further course in feature writing at the NUJ.

What is a typical day at work like?

There's no such thing as a typical day. On writing days you can be deskbound, but the view from my office is a glorious Eucalyptus niphophila, where collared doves perch at eye level. Other days I visit gardens and their owners or designers, go to press events and attend horticultural and design shows and fairs.

How do you secure your commissions?

My writing work is a mixture of pitching ideas for features and being asked by editors to write specific pieces. One of the benefits of a journalistic training is that I can turn copy round speedily.

What do you like most about your job?

Gardeners and growers are amazingly generous with their time and information – walking round a private garden, talking with the owner about all the elements that make it special, is such a privilege – and so is being able to experience Chelsea Flower Show on press day.

What's the most difficult part?

Doing garden visits in the rain while trying to take notes and hold an umbrella or in a season that's different to the set of photos that are being used.

Any tips or advice for other garden writers?

A good way of getting noticed – there are a lot of garden writers out there – is to start a blog. Find subjects and gardens that haven't been covered widely. Also, watch out for cliched words and phrases in your copy.

What's are your future plans?

Although I've lived in the UK for more than forty years, I still haven't seen all the historic gardens, so I plan to add a few every year. I'm also working on a couple of books.

Annie won the Garden Media Guild's Environmental Award in 2011 for the Eco Watch column she wrote in The English Garden.