About Let It Grow

My name is Jeremy Bartlett and I’m based in Norwich in Norfolk.

Let It Grow is my blog about plants and fungi.

I’ve been interested in plants as long as I can remember. At the age of five I started to convert my sand pit into a garden. My Dad taught me the Latin names of the plants in our back garden and my Mum showed me wild flowers in the local parks and countryside.

At university I spent three years studying Botany, before graduating with a Genetics degree, which I then followed up with a PhD in Plant Genetics. When I was a student I didn’t have a garden, but I grew as many house plants as I could – limited by the small amount of money I could afford to spend on central heating.

In the 1990s my wife, Vanna, and I ran Norwich Environmental Weekenders (NEWS), a local conservation group, and spent time looking at wildlife, wild flowers and fungi. We also planted British wild flowers, ornamentals, fruit trees and vegetables in our back garden.

Then in 1999 we became allotment gardeners, growing our own fruit and vegetables.

We helped to set up Grapes Hill Community Garden in Norwich and I led the planting of the garden in 2011 and ran fortnightly gardening tasks. I was Chairman of the Grapes Hill Community Garden Group, which looks after the garden, from January 2012 to March 2014.

In 2012 and 2013 we refurbished the garden at the Belvedere Centre in Norwich, our local community centre. Vanna landscaped the garden and I chose the plants. we were assisted by a group of volunteers (mainly friends we’d persuaded to help us out).

From 2012 to 2016 I was involved in planting up Wensum View Park in Norwich with flower beds, fruit trees, wildflowers and a new hedge.

I volunteered as a Norfolk Master Gardener from 2010 until 2014 (when project funding ran out), helping people and communities to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

Since 2012 Vanna and I have been part of the Friends Of Earlham Cemetery group, recording wildlife in Earlham Cemetery and working with Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Norwich City Council to improve management of the Cemetery for wildlife.

In recent years my interest in fungi has increased and I am an active member of the Norfolk Fungus Study Group. My knowledge of fungi is gradually increasing but I’m still learning!

Our garden

Our garden.

In 2013 we moved house and created a new garden, where we have been recording its wildlife, including 60 species of hoverflies, 22 species of butterflies, 83 species of bees and around 350 species of moths.

Vanna (@VannaBartlett1 on X / Twitter) is a keen naturalist with an especial interest in invertebrates and recently became Harvestman and Pseudoscorpion Recorder for Norfolk. She is also an artist and has created many wildlife linocuts and paintings. In 2020 she wrote and illustrated a book: Arthropedia: An Illustrated Alphabet of Invertebrates. It features some of the creatures we have found in our own wildlife garden, at the allotment and elsewhere in Norfolk and the British Isles. She has her own Arthropedia Blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, take a look at the excellent Botany In Scotland blog. Beautifully written and illustrated, it features a Plant of the Week.

My ambition is more modest: to write a blog post each month.

Jeremy Bartlett.