Our look at the best garden and nature articles of the last year from Country Life includes some very special gardens indeed.
A simple guide to the wildflowers of Britain
Our regular guide to Britain’s wildflowers is a real hardy perennial.
Birkhall: The home of The Prince of Wales on the Balmoral estate
The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III prompted us to look back at Alan Titchmarsh’s beautiful article on Birkhall, the house and garden on the Balmoral Estate where the King made his base while still Prince of Wales.
Alan Titchmarsh on his favourite scented flowers of Spring
‘If “apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze” then a garden replete with form and colour, but devoid of fragrance, is only half the garden it should be,’ Alan wrote in March. Wonderful stuff — even if you’d never heard that apple pie proverb in your life.
The 12 best flowering shrubs to plant for year-round colour in your garden
‘Shrubs are back in fashion,’ wrote Charles Quest-Ritson as he opened his guide. ‘For Country Life readers, of course, they were never out. They have long been the principal element in our gardens, both for their structure and for their intrinsic beauty.’
The Duchess of Cornwall’s gardens at Raymill, by Monty Don
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Like the Birkhall article above this is another which now needs a headline tweak — but everything else is perfect. Monty Don looked at the Queen Consort’s private garden in the issue which she guest-edited for Country Life in July.
Why you shouldn’t grow onions on your allotment — but if you do, go for these really exceptional ones
Mark Diacono is a big proponent of growing only those things which are difficult to find or expensive to buy — which would normally rule out onions. These are the ones he makes an exception for.
The best garden designers and landscapers in Britain
‘A beautiful country house is as much about its surroundings as its bricks and mortar, something that the best garden designers in Britain all understand,’ we wrote in the introduction to our definitive list of the best of the best.
Your month-by-month checklist of what to do in the garden and when in 2022
Keeping on top of the gardening jobs can be daunting. But the answer is almost too simple: keep a detailed checklist of jobs which need doing in each month of the year. You can’t go wrong. (Unless you never get round to doing them, of course.)
Alan Titchmarsh: The old wives’ tales of gardening that are total rubbish — and the ones with a grain of truth
‘I would never dream of describing my late mother as an “old wife”, not least because, during the period in which I was at the mercy of her proverbs and prejudices, she was in her thirties,’ wrote Alan. ‘Yet I am unaware of any neater, more concise way of summing up those snippets of gardening wisdom that are encompassed by the term.’
Don’t plant climbers — plant clamberers
Clematis deserves a place in every garden, explains John Hoyland, the gardens adviser at Glyndebourne in East Sussex. Just not the way you think it does.
