How Would You Use This FREE Powerful Gardening Tool?

What if you just needed two words to transform your garden? So for the past few seasons I've used this two-word technique to help me design the garden that I want because I want to make sure the garden works for me and it's really helped with making the right kind of decisions. This two-word technique even led me to creating the secret garden of which it will be revealed soon. What if I've already said these two words but before I do let me give you some context. So I grew up on a smallholding and learned things like apples and vegetable gardening and organic gardening and then when I was about 10 years old I discovered the Permaculture magazine by accident on a camping trip. The Permaculture magazine really got me hooked on guess what permaculture and here in the UK the Permaculture Association puts on a gathering every single year and it was back in 2019 I went to the Permaculture Convergence and one of the talks that I went to was done by a guy called Rob Hopkins who was the co-founder of the Transitions Town Movement and he was doing a talk about his upcoming book and he was talking about this book from what is to what if unleashing the power of imagination to create a future we want and it's these two words what if that have stuck with me ever since. There's something on the first page that kind of puts puts it into context so a serious book on an important subject without imagination where are we my favorite thing about imagination is that it's free and as gardeners we love free stuff now I know what you're thinking this like whole what if imagination is a bit fluffy I agree with you I thought it was fluffy as well until I kind of realized that you can turn this into a an incredible decision making and design framework for creating a garden later on in the video I'm going to reveal the five amazing benefits of using the what if but let's crack on for now imagination allows us to design and create concepts without having to do any physical work whatsoever you can do it from the comfort of your armchair and it works for us in many different ways perhaps you're someone who just likes to come out and jot down notes or create a bird's eye plan or do a little bit of illustration or sketching or maybe you're like me and I like to use technology and I'm playing around with bits of AI to really help bring that imagination into something visual and almost tangible and even the the strap line on Adobe Firefly's website is your imagination's new best friend maybe you're thinking oh I'd love to be able to illustrate my ideas and bring them to life or use AI art and you might be thinking what if there's somewhere where I can learn all of those skills well the good news is there is it's called Skillshare. Skillshare who's sponsoring today's video is the largest online learning community for creatives be it fine art music productivity side of things you name it they got it and their platform is on demand which means you can fit the classes on Skillshare in and around your life which for me is very very useful and with autumn very much setting in I mean today feels very autumnal as gardeners we find ourselves with a little bit more time on our hands which is why we can imagine but maybe we want to learn new skills one thing I love to do is sketching trees I find the shapes of them they very much captivate me but I always wish I could paint them a little bit better and there are dozens of classes on Skillshare just to do with painting trees that I'm going to start working through over the next few weeks there might be other skills that you want to improve as well one thing I'm very not so good at is organizing especially all of the different projects going on and there's this thing called Notion and there's a class that I'm taking called Notion for YouTubers and it's all about how to organize different projects if you're like me and you love learning and exploring then join Skillshare and if you're one of the first 500 people to click on the link below you're going to get one of Skillshare's best offers not only is your first month free but you also get 40% off your annual subscription what is imagination it's probably something that we all have different ideas on for me it's very much about thinking of something and then seeing what kind of emotional response that brings like when I was creating the idea of a of a rose garden and I really liked it and then we decided to put it here and it it was great fun but it all came down to the question of what if and I think that the question of what if is like the adult version of kids always asking why they're always curious they're always asking oh but why but why but why always trying to get to that end and I think you can follow the same pattern asking what if you do this what if I do that you can start to draw from one small idea you can really build it up into a solid idea that you can then apply and that is exactly how this rose garden came about one of the most important things I want to get across is that with what if because it's just a question and because you're getting ideas they can be as outlandish as you want it doesn't matter it's just an idea that can be adapted over time the thing that I like about what if is that I see it as a tool for spotting opportunities and also preventing problems now before I share the five key benefits or the five key points of using the technique of what if I want to give a couple of little examples so behind me are the terraces and I started that thinking well what if we could grow loads of annuals and we had them on different terraces and now I've realized I don't have enough time for that so I'm adjusting and now my thoughts are what if we turn this over to perennials so maintenance was a little bit easier and when you start that you start this kind of cascade of ideas and yeah looking forward to perennializing the terraces they were the biggest headache on the site but now through using what if I've reframed another example here for the experimental garden it was fenced off initially because I didn't know about the rabbit pressures and there's at the moment no rabbits about touch wood but we hadn't even rabbit proofed the gates and it's been fine and the fence is just a little bit in the way so I started thinking what if we remove the fence well obviously wasted the time of building it this is a bit of the last remaining parts of the fence but what I suddenly realized is that I can actually create soft borders so I could grow comfrey or autumn raspberries and that'll make it look nice because the fence isn't the most aesthetic thing but then I also realized it would create more space for us to finally have a garden shed hello come on another example is what if we put the chickens in the polytunnel because towards the end of the season we always seem to get bird flu restrictions and they have this nice warm space now for winter and if the restrictions come in we don't have to worry about moving them again and then once they're out the next question is what if I turn this into an undercover perennial food forest those are just some nutshell examples of using the what if now let's go into kind of the five key benefits or the key takeaways that we can get as gardeners by applying the what if technique the first benefit is if you're looking at larger garden designs or changes is that it allows you to explore alternative scenarios asking what if allows us to mitigate confirmation bias so it stops us from becoming too attached to one specific idea or to one specific gardening technique it's something that helps in the lead-up and in the creation of the dangers of no dig video for example what if really helps with risk assessment and risk management as well you might be looking at planting something and you might think what if this creates a frost pocket and so by applying what if you're playing out any potential dangers or foreseeing any potential problems in the future to allow your design to be as impactful as possible what if also really encourages critical thinking I think as time progresses we get evolving needs from the garden and so it allows you to strategize for that and ensure that the decisions you're making can either be adapted in the future or at least fit where you think the direction is heading and the final benefit is decision validation so if multiple what if scenarios are explored and the decision still seems sound then it gives you a confidence a boost of confidence in that choice do I have any more tips well the main thing is you don't want to over complicate it the whole point of this what technique or exercise is just to help with decision making to make you more confident in those decisions and the only other really important thing is just capture that in whatever way be it on paper or on your notes just so you have a record of it that you can come back to and look at and if you haven't seen my controversial video of my biggest what if change you should watch it right now and I'd love to hear your thoughts