What is Bramble & Briar?
I’m Andrew Timothy O’Brien, and I’m fascinated by the stories we weave around ourselves, especially the ones that tell us about our relationship to the magic of the natural world. And the setting for so many of these stories is just outside the back door, in the gardens with which we surround our homes.
Bramble & Briar is the story of how my own garden wants to grow, in all its rampant, weedy glory; no clever angles, no hiding the disasters, no steering you quickly past the corner of shame where good gardening intentions go to die. It’s also the story of how I think my garden wants to grow me when I’m in it, though I’m still trying to work out how that works. There are places elsewhere where I talk or write about other people’s gardens, and post pictures of the prettier bits of my own. This is the less polished side of things – leave your expectations at the garden gate. But do bring an appetite for cake, and a willingness to hang out here for a while, putting the world to rights among the beds and borders.
Away from Substack, I’m a garden coach, blending mindfulness and gardening together in a way that helps lead you into a deeper relationship with the natural world on your doorstep (you can find out more about how we can work together here). But now you’re here, I hope you’ll spend a few minutes with me, in my own garden, marvelling at how it all works, almost irrespective of what we do.
Why would you want to subscribe?
If a friendly, warts-and-all look at how a garden writer, podcaster and coach goes about the business of gardening for themselves sounds like it might be up your street, you can subscribe here to get full access to the newsletter and website. And, honestly, I really hope you will. It’s all very well working out these things for myself, but it’s much more fun to do it in the company of like-minded friends.
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Free or paid?
For the past eighteen months or so – just while I’ve been finding my feet here, and contrary to all the advice – everything’s been free. I do get a kick out of the generosity of giving good stuff away. And though I’ll shortly be turning paid support on (I’m assuming there’s a big red lever somewhere), I’m still intending to honour that principle – publishing a regular schedule of free posts. Paying subs will just get you more of them, and the audio voiceovers, along with them warm and cosy feeling of supporting my writing with something I can use to pay the bills. However you choose to subscribe, I’m so grateful that you’re here.
