TV presenter and actress Kelly Brook proves that, regardless of the size of your plot or the tools at your disposal, you can still create a low-effort “sanctuary” that thrives.
She has recently let us in on her very refreshing approach to gardening, which came about after she downsized from a large plot of land to a smaller, more manageable garden due to back issues.
Thanks to wild meadowscaping and rewilding trends we’re seeing at the moment, Kelly's laid-back (and back-friendly) approach to gardening feels hugely relatable.
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Sharing her easy tips for ensuring impressive blooms with minimal effort, Kelly tells Woman magazine: “I would say the easiest thing in the world if you're not a great gardener is just throwing seeds into planters with some multi-purpose compost."
"Make sure there's drainage in the bottom, chuck in some cosmos seeds and that will give you flowers all summer. And the more you cut the cosmos, the more they come back."
Expert advice on growing cosmos
We spoke to Lucie Bradley, a gardening expert at Easy Garden irrigation, for more advice on these long-flowering, colourful cosmos that instantly uplift your garden – and she shared insight into what to do with them once they start to fade.
She shared, "One of the great reasons for growing cosmos in your garden is that they are highly attractive to beneficial pollinators such as bees and butterflies.
"With a long flowering season from June to October, cosmos are great companion plants, providing pollen and nectar even late in the season as well as attracting beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps, hoverflies and lacewings, which are still active in autumn and will happily feed on any soft-bodied garden pests.
"In addition, if you leave the flowers to fade and go to seed, not only are they easy for you to collect and ready to plant next year," says Lucie. "You can also leave some for the wild birds to feed on, with goldfinches, sparrows and tits using them as a natural feeding station." There we have it. Cosmos. Not just a great cocktail, but a great addition to any garden.
Despite downsizing her garden in recent years, Kelly has shared how important gardening has been for her mental health.
Kelly has previously spoken about how her former Kent garden helped foster her love for the hobby, and how she’s learnt to keep it going with a few practical tweaks. She told the Express, "It was so good for my mental wellbeing. I just loved it so much; it was my sanctuary. But as I got older, I had such a bad back from gardening. So I had to tone it down a little bit, and now I’ve got a much smaller garden.
"It’s totally beautiful, but it’s a lot less maintenance because my last garden was very hilly; it just played havoc with my hips and my back."
"But I still love gardening, and all my bulbs are coming up at the moment, and that gives me so much joy every year, seeing my flowers in bloom."
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Kelly might have moved from her sprawling garden, which used to boast its own vegetable patch and a pear orchard, as she once shared on ITV’s This Morning, but she’s kept plenty of wildflowers and bold colours thanks to some very simple tips.
