Bloom Magazine

Description

Bloom exists because of a very specific frustration. In 2018, Zena Alkayat – a journalist who’d worked at Metro and Time Out London – moved into her first house with a garden and went looking for a gardening magazine that didn’t assume she already knew everything. There wasn’t one. So she started Bloom, and it became one of the best-loved indie titles in the UK.

The whole magazine is built around that beginner-friendly, no-snobbery idea. A window box counts as a garden here. So does an allotment, a few pots on a balcony, or a proper backyard. The how-to content is genuinely usable – sowing, planting, what to do this season – but it sits next to longer pieces you wouldn’t expect, like a feature on what gardens do inside psychiatric wards. It never gets overly technical, and it never talks down to you.

Physically, it’s closer to a book than a magazine. Thick matte paper, minimal design, the kind of thing people keep on shelves and reread. If you’re buying for someone new to gardening, or someone who loves nature more than lawn stripes, this is the one.