Batten Blooms

Find Your Garden Persona

A few questions about your taste and your life outside — so we design something you'll actually want to be in.

This takes about 3 minutes. There are no wrong answers — go with your gut.

  • Part 1Your taste & style (5 questions)
  • Part 2Your lifestyle & the problems we're solving (22 questions)
  • ResultYour garden persona + a brief we can start from

All 13 personas

Every garden persona, and the gardener behind it

A drift of yellow coneflowers scattered through tall prairie grasses under an open sky

Native Minimalist

You want a garden that looks like it belongs here — quietly, effortlessly. Clean drifts of native perennials and grasses, a restrained plant palette, low water and low fuss. Beauty through simplicity, not abundance.

Their gardener

Gertrude JekyllThe painter turned garden designer who worked in drifts and restraint rather than crowds — color used sparingly enough that it feels intentional, in every season.

Purple liatris spikes rising through a dense mass of golden black-eyed Susans

Native Maximalist

More is more, as long as it's native. You want layers — groundcover to canopy, blooms from spring through frost, a garden that hums with pollinators and never has a bare patch.

Their gardener

Alys FowlerEcological and permaculture-minded — she plants for the wildlife the garden supports as much as for how it looks, layer on layer until nothing's bare and nothing's idle.

A gravel path lined with pink and blue hydrangeas and a clipped hedge, leading to a white cottage with blue shutters

East Coast Chic

Hydrangeas the size of dinner plates, crushed-shell paths, boxwood hedges just so. You want a garden that looks like it's always ready for a Labor Day party.

Their gardener

Martha StewartPrecision as an aesthetic in itself — structured layout, immaculate upkeep, a garden built for the moment guests arrive as much as for the gardener alone in it.

Mounded dwarf pines and a clipped golden shrub above creeping thyme running over granite ledge and gravel

Scandinavian

Pared-back, textural, drought-wise. Grasses, gravel, sculptural form over color. A garden that looks intentional in every season — including the ones when nothing's blooming.

Their gardener

Edward ScissorhandsSculpture first, plant second — form is the whole point, and it holds even in the seasons when nothing is blooming.

A dense wildflower meadow of blue cornflowers, red poppies and yellow daisies with no visible rows or edges

Chaos Gardener

No rows, no rules. You want a garden that looks like it happened on its own — wildflowers self-seeding, plants spilling into paths, a little bit of glorious mess.

Their gardener

Dickon (The Secret Garden)Wild and intuitive rather than planned — he doesn't design a garden so much as let it find its own way, and trusts what grows where it wants to.

Bunches of herbs hung upside down to dry above a linen sack in a dim rustic room

The Witch's Garden

Every plant earns its place — tea, tincture, dye, kitchen, ritual. You want a garden with intention behind every leaf, not just a pretty face.

Their gardener

Claire Randall FraserEvery plant grown for what it does, not just how it looks — an apothecary's garden, planted with the same rigor as a dispensary.

A neatly clipped hedge with a mixed lavender-toned border along a stone paver path beside a stacked-stone wall

Ordered & Pristine

Symmetry, clipped hedges, not a leaf out of place. You want a garden that looks designed — because it is. Formal structure, year-round polish.

Their gardener

Alan TitchmarshA designer's garden through and through — structured layouts and classic principles, built to a plan and kept to it.

Pink climbing roses tumbling over a weathered iron garden arch against deep green hedging

Cottage / English Garden

Roses tumbling over an arch, peonies leaning into the path, a little overgrown in the best way. Romantic, layered, never quite finished — and that's the point.

Their gardener

Monty DonThe face of English gardening for a generation — his own garden at Longmeadow is romantic, plant-packed borders grown the unfussy way, never showy for its own sake.

A raked gravel garden with weathered boulders and moss set against a wooded backdrop

Japanese Zen

Stillness over spectacle. Moss, stone, a single well-placed maple. You want a garden that's a place to exhale, not a project to manage.

Their gardener

Emily DickinsonA private, small-scale cultivator — the garden as a place for stillness and study, not spectacle.

A collection of terracotta pots planted with succulents and magenta petunias on a sunlit flagstone terrace

Mediterranean / Tuscan

Olive trees, lavender hedges, terracotta warmed by the sun. You want a garden that feels like a vacation you don't have to leave.

Their gardener

Charlie DimmockHard landscaping and planting treated as one thing — sun-warmed stone and terracotta doing as much work as the plants themselves.

Layered jungle foliage with broad glossy leaves and arching palm fronds filling the frame

Tropical / Jungle

Big leaves, bold color, a little bit of drama. You want your yard to feel like an escape — lush, layered, unapologetically alive.

Their gardener

Frida KahloLa Casa Azul as an extension of her art — lush, saturated, and entirely unapologetic about being a lot.

Magenta and white zinnias on tall stems in a cutting bed, ready to be cut for the table

Cutting Garden / Flower Farmer

You garden so you can cut. Dahlias, zinnias, and cosmos in rows, always something for the kitchen table. Function first, beauty follows.

Their gardener

Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables)Enthusiastic and a little impulsive about it — flowers grown because she can't help loving them, always with a vase in mind.

Fern, Anemone, Solomon's Seal, layered against the deep shade of a woodland floor

Woodland / Shade Garden

Ferns, hostas, hellebores tucked under the canopy. You want to work with the shade you have, not fight it — quiet, green, layered.

Their gardener

Mary & Colin (The Secret Garden)A hidden, shaded garden brought back to life through patience and discovery rather than a fight against the shade it's in.