Country Gardens and gardening tips
Country Life's former gardens editor Kathryn Bradley-Hole writes her 2023 Chelsea Flower Show preview — and she anticipates a confident return to form at Chelsea, with mouth-watering designs for productive gardens, aromatic Mediterranean planting and even a reinterpretation of the rock garden.
Alan Titchmarsh considers the new monarch’s extraordinary contribution to British gardening, which is always underpinned by organic methods and a strong belief in husbandry and stewardship.
The more you look at Knoyle Place — the Wiltshire home of the Comtesse de La Morinière — the more there is to admire. Charles Quest-Ritson takes a look at this magnificent garden, which has been subtly and beautifully enhanced in recent decades. Photographs by Mimi Connolly.
Six beautiful gardens from around the country are battling it out to be crowned the Historic Houses (HH) Garden of the Year 2023.
As the fifth generation takes on the care of the historic Borde Hill Garden in West Sussex, Charles Quest-Ritson rejoices in the unique legacy of its horticulturally astute owners.
Set in a steep valley just below Dartmoor, Lukesland Gardens — in Ivybridge, Devon — are romantic woodland gardens filled with exotic trees and flowering shrubs, many of historic importance. Caroline Donald paid a visit; photographs by Mark Bolton.
Sweeps of spring bulbs scatter the lawns of The Wild Garden at Doddington Hall — the Lincolnshire home of Mr and Mrs James Birch — in what appears to be an entirely natural show. Yet it is, in fact, a carefully curated selection that flowers in three distinct phases, says Tilly Ware. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
A century after its seven-year creation by the artist Ferdinand Bac, the magnificent cliff-top garden of Les Colombières — at Menton in France's Alpes-Maritimes department — has been brilliantly restored, says Kathryn Bradley-Hole. Pictures by Will Pryce for Country Life.
The Pagoda at Kew Gardens, designed by Sir William Chambers, is one of the most famous, yet most incongruous landmarks at one of the world's most famous gardens. So why is it there? Jack Watkins explains.
Even in the coldest months, there is much to discover in the garden at Fullers Mill, West Stow, Suffolk. This remarkable plantsman’s garden was lovingly created out of rough ground by Bernard Tickner, finds Tiffany Daneff.
Our look at the best garden and nature articles of the last year from Country Life includes some very special gardens indeed.
Gardeners searching for inspiration for natural, low-maintenance havens would do well to look to the late-17th-and early-18th-century wilderness, says Tilly Ware.
Broughton Hall is the childhood home of Country Life's cartoonist Annie Tempest, whose family have lived here for 1,000 years. Steven Desmond took a look at this palatial house and gardens; photographs by Val Corbett.
The garden at Blackland House, Calne, Wiltshire — the home of Mr and Mrs Ed Nicholson — is famous for its spring bulbs, but really comes into its own in autumn with its crisp underpinning of geometric forms, says Mary Keen. Photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer.
Described in 1925 as the most important Japanese garden in the West, the Japanese Garden at Cowden in Clackmannanshire — the ancestral home of Sara Stewart — fell into decline and was eventually closed in 1955. Now, it has been magnificently restored, as Caroline Donald explains. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
'Within a mashie-niblick' of the 18th green at Muirfield Golf Club lies a garden of great beauty and history, as James Truscott explains.
Alan Titchmarsh explores the garden of Birkhall, The Prince of Wales's Scottish home on the Balmoral estate.
