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 February

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 stocks up on winterberry, repairs an old ‘stone’ urn and reshapes yew topiary

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

All Tooled Up • When you need multiple tools to hand, a garden belt is a useful friend to have. With cleverly designed spaces for string, seeds and secateurs, Acre & Holt’s tweed and leather wraparound garden belt is both sophisticated and practical and will serve you well throughout the pruning season. Garden Wrap, £275. Tel: 01373 229274; acreholt.co.uk

A Star IS BORN • For real razzle-dazzle look no further than our Nation’s Favourite Gardens winner, St Timothee in Berkshire, where Sarah and Sal Pajwani have carefully added structure and detail to transform a neglected ‘sleeping beauty’ into a glittering glamourpuss of a garden

ARTIST’S PALETTE • At Ulting Wick in Essex, Philippa Burrough paints with tulips in bold colour-themed blocks and dots them around for pointillist perfection

STAR TULIPS at Ulting Wick • Tried and tested varieties that contribute to the garden’s spectacular spring show

Living LEGACY • Hillcrest in Gwent is now the sole project of Michael O’Leary, but its every element bears the mark of his talented late partner, Bev Price, from the acid-loving planting and fine specimen trees, to the exquisite, hand-crafted cedar gazebo, making this restful, natural and exceptionally beautiful garden a tribute to their teamwork

Imitation GAME • Stretton Old Hall in Cheshire is a garden that unashamedly borrows ideas from other great gardens and draws inspiration from around the world. Put together, its many fascinating parts add up to one very accomplished whole

Brilliant BLOOMS • Cheerful colour and bold displays are the order of the day at Stretton Old Hall

TRIAL & Success • Helen Brown is a proponent of the give-it-a-go school of gardening, and her fearless approach at Little Ash Bungalow in Devon has paid dividends. Here, her broad-spectrum planting complements incredible valley views for an enchantingly unique effect

SPECIAL SELECTIONS at Little Ash • Keen plantswoman and collector Helen has filled her garden with beautiful and unusual choices

TREASURE TROVE • An Aladdin’s cave of hidden wonders, antique plants and found objects, the garden at Worcestershire’s Pear Tree Cottage is filled with intrigue and meaning

Urban Jungle • In the City of London’s Barbican Conservatory you’ll find the lush planting that inspires head gardener Marta Lowcewicz’s selection of favourite houseplants

Tangerine Dreams • Joe Sharman, aka ‘Mr Snowdrop’, is renowned for breeding speciality hybrids. Now he’s finally achieved a galanthophile’s holy grail by creating a selection of orange snowdrops

DARK ARTS • Enraptured by the mysterious charms of shade-loving hellebores Elizabeth Strangman used her exacting propagation skills to cross the best with the best, resulting in magical selections

Plants for FEBRUARY • In the fourth part of a series looking at choice plant selections, Philip Clayton...