Established in 2016, the Dig Delve is an online, quarterly publication written by landscape designer Dan Pearson, with photography and editorial by his partner, Huw Morgan. Primarily featuring their garden and the surrounding landscape at Hillside in Somerset, the Dig Delve also covers about other gardens, plants, books, food growing, cooking and eating.
To date, the Dig Delve has been available at no charge, with Pearson’s landscape design business shouldering the costs of website development, maintenance and population. However, as Morgan explains it’s time for the magazine to “stand on its own two feet financially”.
From the 1st of February, access to the Dig Delve (and archive) will require an annual (£50) or quarterly (£15) subscription. There will also be a free registration option, which provides access to one article a month. A 20% discount is currently available for all subscribers until the end of February and in support of horticultural professionals (gardeners, nursery workers, etc) and students, a further discount is offered – on the provision of proof of occupation or study. There will be four seasonal issues a year, with stories added to each issue (almost) every week.
The new subscription revenue will invested into the development of new content, payment for commissioned editorial from fellow industry experts and the possibility of an annual print compendium version of the Dig Delve. Morgan has also mentioned plans for the development of a range of stationery featuring his photography. According to Morgan, content for the forthcoming months will feature practical gardening, plant profiles, recipes and updates on the garden at Hillside. They are also looking to launch a new regular interview feature and a number of commissioned pieces by gardeners and other horticultural practitioners they admire.
According to Morgan, the current readership of the Dig Delve accounts for some 5000 newsletter subscribers with over 25,000 instagram followers. A global readership, 50% of Dig Delve readers are UK based, 25% from USA and Canada and the remaining from Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Pearson has been a landscape designer for over 30 years, and for 20 of these was the weekly garden columnist for a number of British broadsheets including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer. An author, he has written several books including The Garden: A Year at Home Farm, The Essential Garden Book (with Sir Terence Conran), Spirit: Garden Inspiration, Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City and Tokachi Millennium Forest: Pioneering a New Way of Gardening with Nature.
A unique publication, the Dig Delve is thoughtfully written and photographed horticultural resource, reflecting of Pearson’s celebrated natural approach to design, providing access to their thoughts on design, plants, landscape and (home grown) food. “Dig Delve gives us both the freedom to write what we want without the demand for the ‘top tips’ and reader ‘takeaways’ that dumb down so much garden writing in print,”writes Pearson.
It will be interesting to see how the magazine fares as it makes the transition from a free to subscription based model, though if the feedback on their social media is anything to go by, the future for the Dig Delve looks rosey.