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
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 Jekyll - The painter turned garden designer who worked in drifts and restraint rather than crowds - color used sparingly enough that it feels intentional, in every season.
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 Fowler - Ecological 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.
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 Stewart - Precision 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.
Scandinavian
Pared-back and textural. Grasses, gravel, sculptural form over color. A garden that looks intentional in every season - including the ones when nothing's blooming.
Their gardener
Edward Scissorhands - Sculpture first, plant second - form is the whole point, and it holds even in the seasons when nothing is blooming.
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.
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 Fraser - Every plant grown for what it does, not just how it looks - an apothecary's garden, planted with the same rigor as a dispensary.
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 Titchmarsh - A designer's garden through and through - structured layouts and classic principles, built to a plan and kept to it.
Cottage / English Garden
Poppies crowding the path, lupines leaning in, a little overgrown in the best way. Romantic, layered, never quite finished - and that's the point.
Their gardener
Monty Don - The 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.
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 Dickinson - A private, small-scale cultivator - the garden as a place for stillness and study, not spectacle.
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 Dimmock - Hard landscaping and planting treated as one thing - sun-warmed stone and terracotta doing as much work as the plants themselves.
Tropical / Jungle
Big leaves, bold color, a little bit of drama. You want your garden to feel like an escape - lush, layered, unapologetically alive.
Their gardener
Frida Kahlo - La Casa Azul as an extension of her art - lush, saturated, and entirely unapologetic about being a lot.
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.
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.
Xeriscape / Low-Water Garden
You garden with the climate, not against it. Boulders, gravel and drought-tough plants that bloom hard on very little water - a garden that looks lush and intentional without a sprinkler running.
Their gardener
Lauren Springer Ogden - The Colorado gardener and author of The Undaunted Garden, who built flowering, layered gardens that live on rainfall - proof that dry ground and abundance aren't opposites.