There is a popular misconception that Patrick was a farmer or smallholder, but in fact, he spent most of his adult life living in a bungalow in Glastonbury with small, steeply sloping gardens to the front and back. You have the right to view these pages and where applicable, to copy these pages and any images to a cache for reference by yourself only at a later date. Low input, year-round “no-dig” gardening that provides your kitchen with fresh healthy food, without breaking your back Written by an acknowledged expert, this friendly guide will help you grow food in whatever space you have – large or small, rural or urban – with minimal purchased inputs, and maximum satisfaction. There is also a whole section on fruit that could be a great time saver, learning from others’ experience.

The lovely garden of my mentor Charlotte Molesworth is featured here in the Financial Times in the last week or so… She has been interviewed lots of times but I thought this was a particularly great piece, with some photos done at unusual angles and different parts… so well worth a read. I found easy to understand instructions, examples, illustrations and loads of professional guidance passed down from Patrick’s long experience.Patrick describes how to select plants based on what you like to eat and how to combine them in polycultures that confuse pests. He wrote a number of seminal books, including Permaculture in a Nutshell (1993), How to Make a Forest Garden (1996), The Living Landscape (2009), How To Read the Landscape (2014) and his magnum opus, The Earth Care Manual (2004), an authoritative resource on practical, tested, cool temperate permaculture.

The Minimalist Gardener has the potential to regenerate some of these plots and re-enthuse the disillusioned as once a minimalist design is implemented that is the end of hard labour and the beginning of abundant harvesting with minimal management. Full of practical, achievable real life examples and projects this book is a wonderfully comprehensive guide to growing a productive, low maintenance garden in a small space. Get yourself secateurs, a piece of hessian for collecting prunings and weeds, a spade and a fork, a hand trowel, some shears, a hoe and a scythe and a stone to sharpen it. After Patrick's death, there were obituaries in The Telegraph, The Guardian and on BBC Radio 4, and tributes to him from all over the world on social media. We're always happy to answer any questions or queries you might have, please get in touch using one of the methods below.But unlike some allotmenteers who seem to delight in the graft of annual double-digging and love a good leaning-on-the-gate type grumble about the poor weather and the slugs, he was all for taking the grunt out of it and focusing on the joy of letting nature do the hard work while we enjoy the bounty. His apparent excitement in showing off his splendid leeks, while casually grazing on some perennial broccoli was contagious, and the series of short films he made about growing vegetables leave one in no doubt of his passion for it. Through observing, season after season, he found the middle road, the sweet spot between productivity and ease.

A few weeks ago we wrote about ‘the minimalist garden’ – and this got us thinking not so much about the features a minimalist garden has, but about how minimalism can be applied to the way we garden. Patrick Whitefield (1949 – 2015) was an early pioneer of permaculture, adapting Bill Mollison’s teachings with a strong Southern Hemisphere bias to the cooler, maritime climate of the British Isles. These grow in clumps of long, thin, knobbly roots a bit similar to the Jerusalem artichoke and were a regular crop in Patrick’s plot. It can quickly become impossible to combine the hard labour of conventional growing practice with busy careers and family life. The Minimalist Gardener brings together a series of 17 articles written by renowned grower, permaculturist and teacher, the late Patrick Whitefield and originally published in Permaculture magazine over a period of more than twenty years.Chapter one succinctly describes permaculture approaches to minimalist gardening with very clear, simple explanations that completely demystify the terms whilst gently and convincingly introducing some of the more revolutionary permaculture techniques that newbies can find a bit dubious. He qualified in agriculture at Shuttleworth College, Bedfordshire and after several years working in agriculture in the Middle East and Africa, he settled in central Somerset.

This section is particularly helpful when it’s time to to start planning (or revolutionising) your plot for the next year, it’s also reassuring to conventional gardeners that they can make gains just by tweaking their existing practices and they don’t have to completely redesign from scratch. The term ‘minimalist’ refers to the amount of work put into maximising harvests and may be a more comprehensible term to draw interest from conventional gardeners.Written by an acknowledged expert, this friendly guide will help you grow food in whatever space you have large or small, rural or urban with minimal bought in inputs, and maximum satisfaction. Discount Codes cannot be combined with any other offers (books on sale or multiple discount codes, for example). The key is knowing the right questions, examining what you want from your garden and knowing how to understand the unique characteristics of the space.