'Our garden was there for me everyday, however I needed it': Maxine Nelson on the power of garden design and how the outdoors can help our wellbeing
Leeds-based garden designer Maxine Nelson has released a book to mark 20 years in business. Laura Reid speaks to her about the power of gardens.
It’s not unusual for Maxine Nelson to be pottering around the garden in her dressing gown on a morning, the delightful assault on her senses marking the dawning of another new day. The radiant flowers, the tweeting of the birds, the texture and fragrance of the flora. It’s her happy place, all of it - and it’s brought her peace and comfort in some of life’s most challenging moments.
"Our garden has always been important,” the 59-year-old says. “I’ve always loved going out there and just sitting every morning. I look at everything that's flowering and walk around in my dressing gown - people probably think I'm crazy, but it's just such a lovely space to be out in.”
Maxine reflects on the power of gardens in a new book she has released to mark 20 years in business, after changing career from the civil service to horticulture in 2005. The garden designer from Cookridge, in Leeds, describes herself as a “lover of peaceful outdoor spaces...with a passion for wellbeing” and aims to help people to reconnect with their gardens “in a way that reflects who they truly are”.
"I like being creative and making sure everybody's gardens are different,” she tells The Yorkshire Post. “I'm not a cut and paste person where everybody gets the same circle or the same layout or whatever. Every garden is unique and that's what I pride myself on is making everybody's garden different so that it's bespoke for them. “
“I enjoy the variety,” she continues. “I get the joy of looking at people's homes and really looking at how people live. Some might be in a very modern house and it calls for a modern style, fresh, clean garden, whereas other people are in (houses much more suited to) cottage gardens. Wherever I go, I'm looking at the style of the property, the way in which people live, and then creating a garden that complements their brief but also enhances their home.”
Gardening piqued Maxine’s interest when she moved into her own home in her twenties and was faced with a grassy blank canvas outdoors. She then studied a gardening for pleasure course at what was Airedale and Wharfedale College, and later went on to complete a national certificate and diploma in horticulture and a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) qualification.
At college, she met her now-husband Neil, who she credits with teaching her “all I knew about practical gardening to start with”. “He was working at a private garden and I used to go with him and learn garden maintenance skills which I really think underpins garden design,” she explains. “There's lots of people think they can design a garden but actually for me you need to have that practical element, considering things like the shape of the lawn and how easy it is to get the mower out and cut it.”
As she was approaching 40, Neil encouraged and inspired Maxine to change her career. She took voluntary redundancy from the civil service, where she’d worked as a PA and office manager, and used her severance pay to help launch Gardens by Max.
Maxine, who over the years has won many awards for her gardens, including at Harrogate Flower Show, and Leeds in Bloom, decided she wanted to mark 20 years in business with “something that would leave a legacy”. She spent months revisiting her files and digging out hundreds of garden design plans and photographs, from award-winning gardens to everyday home makeovers. The result is her book, Maximising the Power of Your Garden, which looks at how to create different types of gardens and includes real case studies as well as space for readers to jot down their thoughts on what they’d like from their own gardens.
“I hope that people will either make small or large changes to their gardens...and actually change the way in which they do things,” says Maxine, who has lectured on horticulture at Shipley College. “Use that outdoor space much more prominently. It's not just a yard. It's not just a back garden. It's not just a load of grass or whatever. It's somewhere for you to go, sit and enjoy, be outside, take in the elements, reflect and entertain and have a nice time... It's another room to the house.”
Adam Frost, a Chelsea Flower Show award-winner and presenter on the BBC's Gardeners' World, has written the foreword to Maxine’s book after she approached him at an appearance in Ilkley earlier this year. At the book’s launch event, she raised nearly £300 towards a wellbeing garden at St James’ Hospital in Leeds which is being created with Adam’s help.
Adam says that Maxine’s book shows how outdoor spaces “can play a bigger role in our wellbeing than we sometimes realise", something Maxine herself has experienced. In 2021, her garden became an “escape” when she was caring for her father, who moved in with her towards the end of his life. “Often half an hour in the garden before my day started was my time to reset, to recalibrate, to just be me,” she says. “I might choose to pot plants, or harvest our sweet peas as a distraction from real life, or sometimes just wander around in my dressing gown experiencing the textures and fragrances of the plants whilst I listened to the birds. Our garden was there for me everyday, however I needed it.”
Over the years, she has adapted their garden to provide solace both for her, and for Neil, who now has dementia. Maxine has even had a special edition of her book printed in large format, to enable Neil to read it too. “The garden is (a form of) therapy for want of a better way of describing it,” she says. “To support Neil and for me to have my time away from the treadmill (of life)...Having that time is really important for my health and wellbeing.”
“Twenty years of designing gardens has enriched my life,” she adds. “I honestly still find this job such a joy.”
- Maximising the Power of Your Garden is available via gardensbymax.co.uk