Elena Rodriguez

Herb specialist & landscape designer

Elena Rodriguez is a landscape designer and herb specialist. Her work centres on drought-tolerant Mediterranean planting — the palette of plants that ask for heat, thin soil and very little water, and reward you for leaving them alone. She writes most of the Sow growing guides, and her interest is less in what a plant is than in what it does: how big it really gets, when it earns its place in the bed, and what it will forgive you for.

She writes for the gardener standing in front of the plant with a spade, not the one reading about it. That means naming the thing that actually kills a plant — the wet winter soil, the pruning done a season too late — and being specific about the fix.

• Mediterranean & drought-tolerant planting
• Herbs
• Landscape design