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Scribehound

There’s a new website in the gardening world called Scribehound, with 30 British garden writers and a new gardening post every day.  (The site will expand to other topics.)
From Scribehound’s “about” page I learned that it “unleashes writers from the influence of advertisers and editorial control, giving them total creative freedom to tackle topics that are most important to them.”

Scribehound’s method of creating such freedom for its writers? “Replacing advertizers and sponsors with subscribers which, if it’s successful, could increase the authors’ remuneration…Scribehound’s revenue-sharing model also upends the way that writers are remunerated, effectively giving them unlimited earning potential.”

Their garden writers include some names that even this Yank recognizes – Noel Kingsbury, Alan Titchmarsh, Tom Stuart-Smith and Jane Perrone.

With the shuttering of so many print publications, garden writers are more and more challenged to find paying gigs, so props to these 30 writers and especially to whoever dreamed up Scribehound, and I wish them great success!

So how exactly will their garden writing be different, no longer “driven by commercial interests and partnerships, rehashed and unimaginative, or failing to adequately address the issues it sought to tackle”? Well, they promise “honest, no-holds-barred content about the topics that we are passionate about…unfiltered views and analysis of real experts, practitioners and commentators, taking on the weightiest and most controversial topics, but with a healthy dose of whimsy and humour too.”

I asked the Scribehound garden writers for examples of articles that wouldn’t have passed muster with editors or advertisers and that demonstrate the writers’ editorial freedom, and Jane Perrone responded that:

The editorial freedom that Scribehound Gardening gives writers means that they can be inventive, both in terms of subject matter and form. So Alan Titchmarsh can write a tongue-in-cheek piece like this one and Noel Kingsbury has the freedom to write about garden design through the lens of a childhood toy.   The fact that there are 30 writers each contributing an article a month means that there is less pressure – as there might be on, say, Substack or an individual blog – to publish every day or week, but they can cover topics that would not fit into the strictures of a magazine or journal, either owing to space, lack of ‘timeliness’ or other factors. So far, writers – myself included – are really enjoying choosing their own topics and ploughing their own editorial furrow. The feedback from many readers and listeners shows that they are enjoying it too. 

I first heard about Scribehound from this post on GardenRant by Anne Wareham that started a meaty conversation about garden writing today, including the Substack option, that continues in the comments by Ben Probert and Marianne Willburn. I also enjoyed Marianne’s response to a particular Scribehound article that got her goat.

Check out Scribehound free the first week, after which it’s $6/month. (I think. I can’t find the subscription fee anymore.)

GardenRant

The “feisty foursome” photo (taken in a Buffalo garden in 2007 by KC Kratt) that ran in the Washington Post.

All this talk about Scribehound and its independence brought back memories of GardenRant’s creation – now 19 years ago – and our very similar goals (but a less ambitious revenue scheme). “Rant” is right there in the name, and the tagline too – “Uprooting the gardening world,” which I thought at the time was pretty audacious. But hey, the Washington Post called us the “feisty foursome,” so I guess it worked.

And of course we had a manifesto, written in 2006 (by Amy Stewart) and I think it holds up very well:

We Are:

• Convinced that gardening MATTERS.
• Bored with perfect magazine gardens.
• In love with real, rambling, chaotic, dirty, bug-ridden gardens.
• Delighted by people with a passion for plants.
• Appalled by chemical warfare in the garden.
• Tuned off by activities that involve “landscaping” with “plant materials.”
• Flabbergasted at the idea of a “no-maintenance garden.”
• Gardening our asses off.
• Having a hell of a lot of fun.

Speaking of Amy, I asked her recently to expand on her ideas for an independent team gardenblog back in 2006 when we started planning this one.

What I think we were after in the early days of GardenRant was a place to write about gardening beyond the confines of what garden magazines would publish: bland how-to articles, endless lists of monthly seasonal tasks, mild enthusiasm for every new plant or tool release or pretty garden (but never any criticism, strong opinions, or even wild exuberance), etc.

 

There was no place where we could say that we hate a plant (nandina, in my case), or that American flags look tacky in gardens because of their color schemes (Elizabeth, I think?) or that a particular public garden is boring, or that anything in horticulture sends us into fits of ecstasy. There was very little about the actual day to day act of gardening–magazines treated gardening more like a home decor project than a lived experience carried out by flawed, messy, unruly people.

 

At the time, it was kind of a wild idea to think about what we’d write if there was nobody around to say, “Oh, you can’t say THAT.” And it wasn’t just that we wanted to be free to trash a corporation like Scotts, or to say that the advice given in a popular gardening book was nonsense. It was also that we wanted to be able to give our very specific, narrow, personal opinion without watering it down with a million caveats and what-about-isms, and without having to pre-emptively respond to the imagined and anticipated letters to the editor or comments from readers. We weren’t trying to write one of those generic gardening pieces that would somehow make three million readers all feel seen. Who wants to read that?

 

Anyway, that’s my feeling about it. As necessary today as it ever was. And I think we were right, considering that I often heard from people who worked at garden magazines or book publishers that they all read GardenRant before going into their weekly editorial meetings. The “establishment” was awfully interested in what we had to say when there was nobody around to tell us not to.

Allen Bush came to GardenRant a bit later and reports that:

Garden Rant has allowed me the independence and freedom from not doing—at least not very often—how-to-plant, design and maintenance stuff. I did that for thirty years in the nursery and seed catalog business. I could do it in my sleep, but it bores me. I like weaving plants, gardening and gardeners with occasional subtexts of art, history, nature and climate. There is nowhere else I can meander so freely.

As for me, when I was asked by Amy and Michele to join them in this endeavor I was already enjoying blogging as an escape from the tedium of writing my garden club’s newsletter. What caught their attention was my post (republished here on the Rant) about Jerry Baker, the “rich quack” selling toxic potions through his programs on PBS.

So yeah, I love taking down quacks, or companies behaving badly. But whether it’s that or raving about a person or garden I’ve discovered, I just want to dig into topics that interest ME, a freedom that I think all of us GardenRant partners and guests have enjoyed immensely. On the other hand, there are freedoms that we enjoy but we don’t engage in – using F-bombs, going political, criticizing other garden writers.  So we do censor ourselves a bit; freedom doesn’t mean anything goes.

A freedom I sure do enjoy and wouldn’t blog without is to write in my own voice.  So guys, I sound just like this at the neighborhood bar where I’m a regular. Otherwise, writing wouldn’t be fun for me.

Now after almost 20 years of writing whatever and however I choose, I enjoy it as much as ever and am excited on every pub day.  (Sometimes nervous, too.)

My current business card, with new tagline.

Admittedly, we Ranters leave money on the table all the time, but that’s okay – GardenRant is a side hustle for us, not a potential full-time income. So we can say no to sponsored posts,  paid links, and sponsorship relationships. Our ads are automatic and almost completely non-gardening, so they have no influence over us, and we have no sponsors to please, either. But I hope that someone else – maybe the folks at Scribehound – can figure out how to get garden writers paid for their good work. 

Oh, and thanks to Scribehound authors for making me think about what we do here, and giving me a new tagline for my business cards.

Scribehound, GardenRant, and what “independent garden writing” means originally appeared on GardenRant on February 9, 2025.

The post Scribehound, GardenRant, and what “independent garden writing” means appeared first on GardenRant.

* This article was originally published here

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