Soil, structure and timing sit at the heart of the spring garden. Long before the first sowings take hold, there is a quieter, more deliberate phase of preparation that determines everything that follows. This is the moment to read the ground, to understand its readiness, and to shape the season ahead with intent rather than urgency.

Soft fruit in Britain is a layered inheritance, from woodland plants gathered in the wild to carefully refined crops of the kitchen garden. What we grow today reflects centuries of selection, exchange and deliberate care.

You can plant potatoes into early May, extending your cropping season. It all depends on your soil conditions. Let Chris Smith explain…

Julia talks about her creative process, working with paper and paint, and finding beauty in the overlooked details of home and harvest. A reflection on slowness, craft and seeing afresh.

With our upcoming bird of prey painting course, we return to this subject not only through practice, but through its lineage in art. Alongside working from life, we trace how artists across centuries have approached the raptor, from the precision of early natural history to the charged atmospheres of Romantic painting and the distilled forms of modernism. It offers a way of situating your own work within a longer tradition, understanding not just how to paint the bird, but how it has been seen, interpreted and reimagined over time.

In Clare Mahoney’s work, fragility and resilience are held in careful tension. Through botanical casting and porcelain, delicate natural forms are translated into objects of quiet strength — inviting us to slow down, look closely, and make with attention.

Botanical casting sits at the meeting point of science and craft, translating fleeting plant forms into enduring plaster reliefs. From ancient traditions to contemporary practice, the article traces a quiet lineage of observation, material exchange and making. At Asterion & Co., this history continues through hands-on workshops that invite close looking, patience and care.

An exploration of Japanese Sashiko as a philosophy of repair rather than decoration — tracing its rural origins, its meeting with denim, and what it can teach us about care, longevity and attention. A meditation on mending as stewardship, and on learning to see wear not as failure, but as history.

Textile artist and sashiko practitioner Emilie Ma reflects on the culture of repair, the lessons she absorbed while living in Beijing, and why the simple act of stitching can become an expression of care, patience and renewal. Her work reminds us that every stitch strengthens not only the fabric in our hands, but the attention we bring to making.

Join us at The Old Vicarage in Leigh-on-Mendip, Somerset, the home of Asterion & Co. for our monthly Book or Poetry Circle.

Asterion & Co. invites you to bring the green indoors — craft wreaths, paint your own seasonal botanicals Christmas card, all honouring Christmas traditions.

Neil Crump, Founder of Asterion & Co., blends a background in biology, art, and communications to create meaningful experiences in Somerset. Rooted in craftsmanship and connection, his story inspires Asterion’s philosophy of living, making and doing things well.

Botanical illustrator and card designer Kate Charlton brings her painter’s eye and florist’s sensitivity to every petal she paints. From her Somerset studio to The Old Vicarage in Leigh-on-Mendip, she shares how emotion, craftsmanship, and quiet confidence shape her work — and her upcoming Asterion & Co. Christmas Card Course.

Heritage-Inspired Learning™ is Asterion & Co.’s signature way of sharing knowledge and experiences — taking the best of traditional skills, practices and aesthetics and pairing them with contemporary insights, techniques and thinking. It’s learning rooted in the wisdom of the past, yet shaped for the needs and creativity of today.

What do you go when the kitchen garden produces a mini mountain of produce? A preserve is my go to. Grapes and cucamelons make a delicious rich chutney that smells and tastes like heaven.

At first glance, the cucamelon looks like a modern novelty destined for Instagram fame — a miniature watermelon, the size of a grape, with a cucumber-like cross section, satisfying big crunch and a cucumber taste with a hint of tangy lime.

These tiny fruits (Melothria scabra) are no modern hybrid at all, but heirs to a heritage that stretches back centuries to the heart of Central America.

Asterion Founder, Neil Crump, chats to Chris, our first official collaborator, about the values that underpin good growing and good living.