Harry Holding is a garden designer and the founder of Harry Holding Studio. His first RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden in 2023 was over 80 percent edible and won the People's Choice Award, and this year he returned with the Eden Project and won the RHS Environmental Innovation Award. His first book, Eat Your Garden: Edimentals as a Beautiful, Low-Effort Way to Grow Food, came out this spring with Chelsea Green.

Most of us split the garden in two, with the pretty part in one place and the vegetable patch in another. Harry works with edimentals, plants that are both ornamental and edible, and a lot of us are already growing them without knowing it. He sees food as a gateway to connecting with nature, and the garden we already have as the place to start.

We talk about what happens to a Chelsea garden once the show is over, how one show garden became two school gardens, and why a potato is maybe the best first thing to grow. We get into edible meadows, a garden he grew in crushed rubble, the case for sea buckthorn, and a concrete made from waste mussel and cockle shells. Harry also shares the feeling of being connected to something bigger when we're out in nature, and two ways in for anyone who doesn't feel that pull yet.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Eat Your Garden: https://www.chelseagreen.com/writer/harry-holding/ 
The School Food Matters Garden, Chelsea 2023: https://www.givingback.org.uk/our-gardens/school-food-matters-garden
The Eden Project Bring Me Sunshine Garden, Chelsea 2026: https://www.edenproject.com/media-relations/eden-projects-chelsea-garden-receives-top-honours-after-star-studded-day
Stephen Barstow and edimentals: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/
Charles Dowding on no dig, Season 1: https://gardensofearthlydelight.com/episodes/the-less-you-dig-the-more-you-grow-w-charles-dowding
Grow Together by Charles Dowding: https://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/books/charles-dowding/grow-together/9780241807101/
Sid Hill: https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/misc-shows/designer-biogs/chris-hull-sid-hill
Joshua Sparkes at Birch Farm: https://woolsery.com/thecollective/birch-farm/
Peter Korn: https://www.gardensillustrated.com/gardens/international/peter-korn-klinta-tradgard-sand

CONNECT WITH HARRY
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harryholdingstudio/
Website: https://harryholding.co.uk/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/harry-holding-studio/

SUPPORT THE SHOW
This season, like the first, is ad-free and listener-funded. You can make a one-time or recurring donation through our fiscal sponsor, tax deductible in the US: https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/gardens-of-earthly-delight
Or subscribe to the newsletter for $7 a month and get the extended notes for every episode, plus the parts of these conversations that did not make the recording: https://gardensofearthlydelight.substack.com

FOLLOW GARDENS OF EARTHLY DELIGHT
Website: https://gardensofearthlydelight.com
Listen and subscribe: https://gardensofearthlydelight.com/subscribe
Substack: https://gardensofearthlydelight.substack.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gardensofearthlydelightpod/
Everything in one place: https://linktr.ee/gardensofearthlydelight
Music by Dolly Valentine: https://open.spotify.com/artist/00CmJgHxGVen5RjRFppVUt
Logo by Hunky Kitty: https://altonkyle.com