Enjoy over 60 beautiful gardens a year with The English Garden. Every issue features country, city, cottage and coastal gardens, with advice on how to recreate them. Be inspired by articles written by the country's top garden designers and discover the best plant varieties for your garden, chosen by expert nurserymen and plantspeople.
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Welcome
THE ENGLISH GARDEN
This Month • Our guide to plants, people, gardens and events, tasks and shopping in Spring
People to Meet • Introducing the gardeners and public figures we most admire in British horticulture
Sarah’s favourite gardens
Out & About • Unmissable events, news and the very best gardens to visit this month
Bunny’s Diary • This month, Bunny Guinness is planting asparagus, treating roses, and ageing stone balls
Beautiful & Useful • New plants, books, tools and creative designs, plus shopping inspiration
Green Machines
HAPPY PLACE • In the sheltered small garden of this London family home, award-winning garden designer Jane Brockbank has created an oasis of sociable spaces, overflowing with joyous planting
Saving GRACE • Mary Cox worked hard to turn the derelict space surrounding her thatched and timbered Worcestershire home into the colourful wildlife-friendly cottage garden she now calls her ‘saviour’
Cottage Garden FAVOURITES • A pretty combination of classic perennials, climbers and roses in uplifting colours
Mary’s advice for propagating your own plants
Her Real GARDEN • While lockdown was a time of professional uncertainty for designer Ann-Marie Powell, it also let her focus on her own neglected garden and rediscover a passion for planting that led to the creation of the ‘My Real Garden’ virtual community and book
FUTURE BRIGHT • The guiding principle applied by Bridget Allen to the garden at Lillesley Barn in Suffolk is to believe in tomorrow. And over 16 years, her willingness to experiment with its tricky soil has paid dividends
Flower POWER • High-performing plants fill Bridget Allen’s garden with blooms all summer long
Urban EDEN • When Declan Buckley took on the design of this private London garden, his brief was to maintain the connection with the city beyond, while creating privacy – and a haven for wildlife – within
Inner SANCTUM • Miles Raybould was tasked with creating a sense of space and seclusion in a compact central London garden that is overlooked on every side
Green & SERENE • Miles Raybould has used a calming green planting palette accented by flashes of white
Island Dreams • Tresco Abbey Garden’s curator Mike Nelhams suggests exotic summer bulbs from the collection that will thrive on the mainland if given the right conditions
Polite Company • In Norwich, Richard Hobbs hosts the National Collection of Muscari, a genus that includes hundreds of pretty and well-behaved plants, despite its two infamously boisterous exceptions
Muscari Magic • Richard Hobbs shares his tips for these easy-to-grow bulbs, whether they’re in borders or pots
Pot Luck • For Arthur Parkinson and his family, paving has posed no obstacle to the creation of an intensely colourful but low-maintenance container garden in the tiny front garden of their Nottingham home
Flying COLOURS • An eye-popping mix of annuals and dahlias contributes to this flamboyant front garden
Arthur Parkinson’s Container Recipes
Moving Mountains • Native to some of the world’s harshest high altitudes, diminutive alpines are tougher than they look. Wendy Bates of Rotherview Nursery in Sussex advises on replicating their growing conditions here in the UK
Alpine STARS • These alpines bear beautiful little flowers for many weeks...