I'm Nigel Openshaw, a kitchen garden blogger/writer based in Manchester, UK.

“Everything Pleasant in the Kitchen Garden” is a simple blog with stories from activities in the garden


I’ve gardened since I was a kid with my family. I Love the aspect of nurturing and design with landscape. There’s an amazing bonus with being able to eat from the garden too.

Wellbeing is a helpful process that has helped with problems in my life. Self-help and Mediation have helped in centering focus.

I have had a bumpy life with illness and stressful situations. Later a lot of it has been diagnosed with both CFS/ME and social anxiety. 


Photography has been an enjoyable hobby. I like to take images in macro and of nature.

Most of the photos taken come from the kitchen garden. There are always opportunities to take photos of the plants and vegetables. Over many years he has focused on improving the aspects and lighting.

I have a profile on Shutterstock: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Nigel+Openshaw


Nigel Openshaw is a TESOL qualified teacher and taught in South Korea. He taught and managed classes for 8 years with Elementary, Middle, High and Adult students.

His series, “ESL Discussion Topics” came from working in teams, co-teaching and individual teaching. 

He is currently working on a new series of activity ESL books. 


Nigel has a passion for learning history and seeing nature in the places he visits. To look back at the history can give us an enthusiastic sense of understanding of other cultures.

He is a keen traveller, visiting countries such as South Korea, Australia, Finland, Wales, Ireland and UAE. A couple of the places he stayed were working holidays. 
His time in Australia and New Zealand lasted for a year and as such made for a life-changing turn of events. He felt so overcome with positivity with their culture that he turned his journal notes into a published book.


Nigel is a web designer for over 25 years collaborating with clients in Australia and the United Kingdom. Now he is mostly concentrating in Manchester, UK.

He started as a hobby in the early days of dialup internet. Back then it was a case of many gifs and audio background files. Now it’s a bit more tasteful. His sites started in the days with raw HTML coding. These days however is CMS WordPress design.

Since then he created Windows office-based software (most well-known was Newsletter Publisher), but all the time UI and layout were the most intriguing elements.