The English Garden

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 December

People to Meet • Introducing the gardeners and public figures we most admire in British horticulture

Out & About • Unmissable events, news and the very best gardens to visit this month

Bunny’s Diary • Bunny prepares for Christmas with a real tree and suggests perfect presents for gardeners

Beautiful & Useful • New plants, books, tools and creative designs, plus shopping inspiration

Wonders of the West • Enjoy a four-day break taking in the gardens of Somerset and Dorset, arranged for readers of The English Garden by travel specialists Sisley Garden Tours

Present Perfect • Christmas is the ideal time to fine-tune your garden wish-list – and if you need a steer, look no further. Whether it’s the coat of your dreams, sloe gin or a tulipiere, these are the tools, treats and accessories everyone will be delighted to find under their tree this year.‘Community Garden’ table accessories, John Lewis. Tel: 0345 6100336; johnlewis.co.uk.

Gifts for the Great Outdoors • From benches to bird baths and shoes to garden caddies, the choice of outdoor presents is almost endless. Start, perhaps, with something positioned close to the house where it can easily be appreciated. A plant stand will show off seasonal containers of early bulbs, auriculas or summer pelargoniums. Plant theatre, from £139.95. Tel: 0345 0920283; sarahraven.com

Full CIRCLE • An ingenious design solution to an unusually positioned plot, has resulted in the amphitheatre-like garden at Croft Lodge in Kent, where generous borders of shrubs and grasses keep it looking fresh even in winter

THE LIGHT OVERCOMES • Gina Price maintains she is no fan of the winter gloom, and at her innovative and instinctive garden, Pettifers in Oxfordshire, the light shines through, picking out special details and illuminating its more intensely planted areas

A Touch of FROST • Perennials, grasses and carefully chosen woody plants sparkle in cold weather

QUIET SEASON • In the still of winter, Henry Crawley can sit back and simply enjoy the spare beauty of the structural garden he has created at Hunworth Hall in Norfolk

A Place in THE FROST • Garden designer Juliet Cox-Nicol and her husband Robert have relocated from France to Lower Bowden Manor in Berkshire, where a focus on form and structure has resulted in an all-season garden that displays a serene beauty in the winter chill

Cold CUTS • Foliage, bark and buds brighten up the garden at Lower Bowden Manor in winter

Different LIGHT • Whether you’re examining the detail of a frosted seedhead or stepping back to appreciate a garden’s bare outline, winter requires us all to adjust our expectations. This is particularly the case at RHS Garden Hyde Hall in Essex, where winters are sometimes fierce and planting is used to withstand its rigours while retaining interest

Get the Green Light • For a fresh garden offering year-round interest, Matthew Pottage, curator of RHS Wisley, recommends a selection of ten strikingly noteworthy evergreens

Dry Run • Excellent drainage is key to keeping half-hardy correa happy. These winter-flowering natives of Australia and Tasmania hate getting their feet wet but, as Dr Judy Clark, holder of the Plant Heritage National Collection, explains, their beauty is ample reward for the extra...