The Gentle Greenhouse began in 2021 as a notebook kept inside a slightly battered 8-by-10 greenhouse at the end of a small garden in the countryside. The greenhouse came with the house; the notebook came with the first winter, when everything I had read about growing under glass turned out to be about somewhere warmer, sunnier, and generally more competent than the corner of Europe where I live.
What started as notes to self — sow dates, frost dates, the eternal question of when is too early for tomatoes — became a habit, then a newsletter to a few gardening friends, and finally this site. Along the way the glasshouse was joined by a small polytunnel, a compost heap of increasing ambition, and a kitchen windowsill that is never without a jar of something rooting in water.
Everything here is written from experience — usually the experience of doing it wrong first. I write about greenhouse growing through four proper seasons, the herbs and salads that bridge the gaps, and the slow craft of compost. No miracle products, no shortcuts, and no claims I have not tested on my own tomatoes.
— Clara Bennett