| Rediscovering Life Through Soil and Plants I’ve been circling this post for a while, unsure quite how to begin it, which is probably a sign that it belongs exactly where it’s landed. This marks the start of a new strand on the blog called The Gardener Bloke — and if you’ve been visiting the site regularly, you may already have noticed it quietly creeping in. A post here, a slightly different tone there. Nothing announced. Just a gentle shift. That’s very much in keeping with how most things happen around here. Before I go any further, a small pause feels right. This post is being published on Christmas Day, and whether you’re reading it today or somewhere in the slower stretch around it, I hope you’re warm, rested, and feeling held in whatever way this season allows. Whether your day is busy, quiet, joyful, complicated, or something in between, I hope there’s at least one small moment where you can breathe and let the year loosen its grip for a while. Back to the matter at hand. Some of you will already recognise this voice. Long before Earthly Comforts existed, before gardening became my work, my routine, and the way I now measure time, I ran a blog called A Guy Called Bloke. It wasn’t about one thing. It was films, poems, short stories, writing prompts, observations about life — whatever happened to be tugging at my sleeve at the time. It never tried to be big or clever. It was just honest, and it ran quietly like that for years. When gardening began to take up more and more space in my life, I found myself running two worlds side by side. By 2022, I was already building this gardening blog in the background while still writing the old one. By June 2023, I knew I couldn’t keep doing both. Something had to give. So I made a clean cut. I closed the mixed blog, deleted it completely, and committed fully to gardening. Some of the old readers came with me. Some didn’t. A few — who aren’t gardeners at all — said they missed the old tone, the rambling, the bloke behind the words. The Gardener Bloke is, in part, for them. But it’s also for me. Because the truth is, the gardening story itself is far more human, accidental, and quietly surprising than I often give it credit for. I didn’t set out to be a gardener. Not even close. For a long time, I joked that I was the brown gardener. Compost was my thing. Still is. I loved the structure, the balance, the slow, quiet alchemy of waste turning into something rich and alive. The smell when it’s right. The feel of it in the hands. My partner, Suze, was the green gardener. Plants, pottering, tinkering — that was how we framed it, and we were both quite comfortable with those roles. Then, in September 2022, a client — let’s call him R — made an offhand comment that changed everything. He said his wife liked to potter in gardens, I liked compost, and then asked, almost jokingly, “Do you ever garden?” “No,” I said. And I meant it. When he mentioned they’d just lost their gardener and were looking for a new one, I didn’t step forward. I didn’t even consider it. I suggested Suze instead, because in my mind, she was the gardener. I genuinely believed that. So we started together in October 2022. No grand plan. No big declaration. Just two people turning up to a garden that needed care. The winter that followed was one of those long, sodden ones — relentlessly wet, awkward underfoot, and hard to work around. We only managed to get into the garden a handful of times before the year ended. But we kept going back. When the weather allowed. When it made sense. No pressure. Looking back now, I think something had already begun to shift by February 2023, though I didn’t notice it at the time. I was still telling myself the same story: Suze loves gardening, I’m just helping, compost is my thing. Then one day in March, while we were working in R’s garden, it slipped out of me without warning. “I really love gardening,” I said. “I never thought I would.” Suze stopped what she was doing, looked at me, and said, “You’re a natural gardener. You love it. I don’t. I like to tinker. To potter. Not a gardener. Maybe you should look at gardening as a business.” That moment still sits with me. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was quietly truthful. The roles we thought we had gently swapped without either of us noticing. Gardening — which I’d never chased or planned for — had crept up on me through soil, compost, patience, and time. And that’s how Earthly Comforts came into being. Not through ambition or strategy, but through accident. Through listening. Through turning up. Through realising, one muddy afternoon at a time, that something had taken root. Now it’s December 2025. Gardening isn’t just what I do — it’s how I think. I notice soil everywhere. I read the weather instinctively. I measure time by seasons rather than dates. I sleep better after a day outside. I breathe this work. And yet, at the heart of it all, compost is still my first love. Always will be. The brown stuff. The foundation. The quiet work beneath the surface. My deeper dream isn’t just gardens. It’s soil. A future Soil Hub. A place — physical or otherwise — where compost is taken seriously, where waste becomes a resource, and where soil health is understood as the beginning of everything, not an afterthought. So The Gardener Bloke is me making space again for the human side of all this. The accidental gardener. The compost nerd. The bloke who didn’t set out to do this, but stayed because it felt right. It’s a place where gardening can sit alongside films, thoughts, frustrations, small joys, and the occasional wander off topic — much like the old days. The practical posts aren’t going anywhere. The advice, the seasonal notes, and the hands-in-the-soil work will keep coming. But every now and then, this space will slow down. It will ramble a little. It will remember that behind every garden is a person, and behind this one is a bloke who found his way here by accident and decided to stay. If you’re here for plants, you’re very welcome. If you’re here for soil, even better. And if you’re here for the person behind the spade — this series is for you. |
The Gardener Bloke
Earthly Comforts 
It good to hear your voice behind the gardener Rory. It’s good to connect again.
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