Every week, Country Life looks at the country's most beautiful gardens and asks questions about why we dedicate so much time to the pursuit of this natural beauty. These are the most viewed of those articles from 2020.
Birkhall: The home of The Prince of Wales on the Balmoral estate
Credit: Clive Nichols/Country Life Picture Library
As HRH The Prince of Wales was locked down at his Scottish home, Birkhall, this piece from our archives about the beautiful Aberdeenshire gardens proved hugely popular.
Arthur Parkinson: The ‘intensely creative’ gardener with ‘spectacular flamboyance’ rising to the top of the gardening world
Credit: Daniel Gould / Country Life
Arthur Parkinson is the fresh-faced social media sensation hailed as the rising star of the gardening world. Caroline Donald went to meet him.
Alan Titchmarsh: ‘I suppose I should be going stir-crazy in self-isolation. The reality has been rather different’
Credit: Val Corbett/Country Life
Not going to the Chelsea Flower Show for the first time in half a century set Alan Titchmarsh musing about lockdown — and how it reminded him why he took to a career in gardening in the first place.
Reddish House: The ‘dream house’ and gardens of Cecil Beaton
Credit: Val Corbett/Country Life
Reddish House came on to the market in the summer, prompting a surge of interest in this fascinating 2019 look at the great Cecil Beaton’s former home.
The secrets of the wisteria pergolas in the Private Gardens at Petworth House
Credit: Val Corbett/Country Life
Non Morris paid a visit to the parts of Petworth normally hidden from the visitor’s gaze.
Monty Don: ‘The point of gardening? It’s to find solace, to be happy, to make beauty, have fun and muck about. How you do it doesn’t matter’
Credit: Derry Moore
Monty Don, gardening writer and broadcaster, spoke to Country Life’s Tiffany Daneff about dogs with film presence and the lockdown recording process.
How to master the fine art of pottering
Credit: Alamy
The joys of doing things slowly are something Alan Titchmarsh discovered in the spring.
10 of the best secret gardens in Britain — and how you can visit them
Credit: Wyndcliffe Court
Inspired by a recent adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic, Juliet Roberts selected a few of her favourite secret gardens.
Moor Wood, ‘one of midsummer’s most beautiful and romantic gardens in England’
Credit: Britt Willoughby Dyer for the Country Life Picture Library
Charles Quest-Ritson visited the National Collection of rambling roses, which showed these most romantic of plants at their very finest.
The centuries-old Italian gardens that evoke the romance of Romeo and Juliet
Credit: Alex Ramsay
Jenny Condie took a look at Giardino Giusti in Verona and Villa Fracanzan Piovene near Vicenza.
Charles Quest-Ritson: What English country gardeners can learn from their German counterparts
Charles Quest-Ritson has spent years making trips to Germany to gather ideas and new plants — but is puzzled that nobody
Charles Quest-Ritson: Why every gardener in Britain should be growing philadelphus
Charles Quest-Ritson's list of flowers that every garden should own includes the usual names — rose, daffodil, clematis. But he'd also
The best honeysuckle to grow in your garden – especially if they’re gifts from now-departed friends
Charles Quest-Ritson extols the virtues of delightful honeysuckle.
Rage against the buttercups: How to wage war on the weeds in your garden
Charles Quest-Ritson loves plants — but in his garden, he only wants the ones he chooses.
