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.

WELCOME

THE ENGLISH GARDEN

The Warmest WELCOME • Even in the chill of late winter, Rosemary Alexander’s relaxed Sussex garden at Sandhill Farm House is ready to welcome visitors with outstretched arms, a feast for the senses emerging from its fertile soil

Plant of the Month • Held amid glossy evergreen leaves, tiny sarcococca flowers emit a powerful perfume

Things to Do • Get ahead at the start of the year with planning, planting, cleaning and tidying

Fire & Ice • Under the leaden grey skies of winter, Higher Cherubeer in Devon still has plenty to entice and excite, the eye-popping contrast of flaming salix stems and pristine snowdrops forming its first spectacular seasonal combination

Plant of the Month • Wow-factor spidery witch hazel flowers fill winter gardens with a zesty fragrance

Things to Do • As winter comes to an end, prune raspberries and buddleja, plant onion sets and snowdrops

Heart of GOLD • Spangling the lush green lawns gold, historic drifts of daffodils are a mainstay at Nettlestead Place in Kent, whose gardens have been carefully reshaped over the decades to create a place of refuge for people and wildlife

Plant of the Month • Daphne’s pretty pink perfumed flower clusters grace a compact-growing shrub

Things to Do • As the days lengthen, tidy borders and get sowing hardy annuals, tomatoes and hardy crops

Magic TOUCH • At Caisson House in Somerset, Phil and Amanda Honey have worked to carve a garden from the industrial landscape, balancing wildness with formality to ensure that the spell cast by this magical setting is never broken

Plant of the Month • Sprays of delicate scented lily of the valley bells emerge between clumps of verdant leaves

Things to Do • Prepare those summer displays with plug plants and sowings, and give your lawn some TLC

Points of VIEW • On the one hand Warwickshire’s Priors Marston Manor is a Georgian landscape garden of incredible views; on the other it’s a charming series of rooms filled with romantic planting and delectable surprises

Plant of the Month • Filling the early summer garden with fragrant flowers, philadelphus are easy shrubs to grow

Things to Do • As the weather warms, keep pests and weeds in check and take steps to curb rampant growth

Back to BASICS • Mary Giblin has gardened all her life but after completing a design course, her new space has had the benefit of what she calls a ‘garden-changing’ approach

Plant of the Month • Luxurious multi-petalled blooms are a summer delight on this graceful English climbing rose

Things to Do • Now the risk of frost is passed, fill your garden with tender ornamentals and edibles

Happy Place • Designer Sue Townsend has transformed overgrown apothecary beds into the centrepiece of this garden in the Berkshire countryside, now thoroughly enjoyed by Catrina Holme and her family, plus a range of wildlife

Plant of the Month • With its nectar-rich flowers and aromatic silvery-green foliage, lavender is a summer must-have

Things to Do • Make new plants from cuttings and runners, and prune back lavender and early perennials

Fiery RESOLVE • At The Stables in Cheltenham, Linda Marsh has channelled her love of flaming colour and grand-scale planting to create her dream garden – blazing with energy and a far cry from typical Cotswold green

Plant of the Month • The...