With our commitment to promoting inspiring stories and recognising the value of community, CoirProducts.co.uk is excited to sponsor the podcast, Loose Gardeners, for this year.
Loose Gardeners (@loosegardeners) is a gardening community and podcast run by Sarah (@sanderson_garden), Debs (@debs_homeandgarden), Leanne (@gardeningandclueless), and Clare Louise (@4mcds_bloomingplot). Having set up Loose Gardeners on Instagram in September 2022, this gardening community has grown over the months, bringing together growers and gardeners. Read on to learn all about Loose Gardeners.
How and why did Loose Gardeners come about?
It all started with an idea to talk really. Debs approached us individually to ask if we’d like to go live with her to talk all things gardening. It was Autumn and gardengram was quiet, but there were still plenty of us around that were starting to miss the chit chat around gardening and a live with the 4 of us chatting all things garden seemed to fill that void.
What’s the purpose of your page/podcast?
To bring gardeners together, to swap advice and failings and to learn from one another. Let’s not forget there are many of us gardening to support our mental health and Loose Gardeners is another way to strengthen that support and help gardeners to connect with one another.
The name is really catchy! What’s the thinking behind the name?
On that very first live there were lots of people watching who said it was just like watching an episode of Loose Women but for gardening – and so the name was born!
What are some of the topics / themes you cover through your website / podcast?
We work really hard to try to cover all bases from gardening in general to allotments, wildlife, soil, influencers – you name it we try our hardest to cover it. It is important to remember that, while our followers are gardeners, each individual has a different gardening experience and we work hard to make sure everyone has a way to connect to Loose Gardeners.
What has been the most inspiring about this podcast?
To know that there is a person out there listening to our podcast in their car/on the train/plane is mind blowing! The idea of the podcast is that it can be played anywhere – so if you’re a person who loves their garden and doesn’t have the free time to watch the live, then it’s still super easy to connect with us, pop your ear buds in and listen whilst you work. We’ve had some amazing people on our lives/podcasts and we’re learning new things from those people all of the time and we hope that is the same for our followers.
What is a message you would love to share with other gardeners / growers?
Gardening has a reputation for being a lonely hobby, we aim to change that. Share those moments that make you smile with other like minded people by sharing photos, sending messages, adding comments and interacting with the Loose Gardeners account and you’ll soon realise there are so many more like minded people in world waiting to connect with you and your garden that you’ll wish you found gardengram sooner.
What are your plans for Loose Gardeners for the future?
Right now we’re taking it a month at a time. The 4 of us have very busy schedules and we’re using our spare time to run the page and make sure it’s working for its followers on a daily basis. So long as our followers are happy, we’re happy.
Anything else you would like to add / highlight?
The importance of the friendships we’ve all made via this little community we’ve created… We’ve stumbled across people our paths would have never crossed with and made friends for life. Some of us have even found friends 10 minutes around the corner that we didn’t know were there!
We’d also like to say a huge Thank You to CoirProducts for reaching out and believing in us enough to sponsor us. We’re all truly grateful.
To learn more and connect, you can also visit their website: https://www.loosegardeners.co.uk