Blogger Spotlight: Nick Moyle and Rich Hood, Two Thirsty Gardeners

Authored by Rich Hood and Nick Moyle, Two Thirsty Gardeners offers practical tips on gardening. The pair started working together in 2008 when they began making their own cider. Their blog is a vital resource to those seeking to find a solution to problems such as destructive weeds, unexplained yeast infections and slugs. They also offer creative advice such as how to produce fresh vegetable harvest and turning some of the fruits of their labour into alcohol. Nick Moyle and Rich Hood, who appear on our top ten gardening blog ranking chat to us about why they started blogging, why they are passionate about gardening and how they like to work with PRs.

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your blog? We’re two middle-aged men who have known each other since university with gardening and drinking booze among our hobbies. We started making cider using locally scrounged apples, and when Rich got an allotment we planted some cider apple trees and thought it would be fun to see what else we could grow and turn into booze. The blog started out chronicling those digging and swinging adventures but over the years has expanded to include almost anything relating to gardening and alcohol.

Why did you start the blog? When we started there wasn’t a lot of information online for people wanting to grow things for booze-making purposes. We thought blogging about it would not only give us the impetus to try new things, but we also thought it might help us connect with other people doing similar things.

What is gardening to you (how important is it you to have a garden in your home)? We’ve both always enjoyed the ‘working with nature’ ethos of gardening. It helps us get out of the house and the results are extremely rewarding – from the sense of achievement of getting something done (such as putting up a shed), to providing fresh produce to eat and drink. And the garden can be an extremely relaxing place.

What type(s) of plants do you grow? We mostly grow fruit and vegetables but also maintain borders for flowers. We quite like growing unusual veg that you wouldn’t see in the shops – such as huautonzile and oca – along with our different varieties of apples. We would describe our planting schemes as ‘natural’ – ie. a bit scruffy, even allowing some plants considered weeds to fill spaces.

Did you anticipate for your blog to become this popular and successful? For our day jobs we’re graphic designers and have worked in the media for over 20 years, so we knew how to create a ‘brand’ for the blog and thought there might be a market for what we’re doing. But we didn’t quite imagine the huge success and opportunities it has generated – from having our own recipe book published (Brew it Yourself) to writing about gardening and alcohol for national newspapers.

What is your major challenge as a gardener? Always combatting the weeds we don’t want. And finding time to do everything we want to do.

What advice do you have for others wanting to start their own gardening blog? Just get on and do it – there’s always something new to do in the garden so don’t wait for things to happen. We launched our blog within a week of coming up with the idea and, much like the garden, have let it organically take shape over time, rather than strategising too much about how it should function.

How do you like to work with PRs? We’re always happy to hear ideas from PR companies, either for things they think might be of interest to our readers or of ways we can contribute to their client’s marketing and communication collateral. So long as they’re genuine and have some inkling of what we do we’ll listen to what they have to say. (But please, don’t start an introductory email with the phrase “I’m reaching out to you…”)

How can PRs improve their blogger outreach? Most of the good PRs do a fine job already. Although some people assume that a ‘blogger’ is, in some way, less worthy that a ‘journalist”. We’re both and we put the same amount of effort into both, so people shouldn’t in any way feel that bloggers can be treated with less respect and reward for the work they do with PRs brands.

What do you see in the future for your blog? We’ve been working on plans for increasing the online coverage we can offer to gardening brands by expanding the site beyond being just a blog-based platform. Lots of work to do by we’re very excited about the prospects.