The deep, wooded valley of Lamorna runs down to the bluest of rocky coves, secreted between Mousehole and Porthcurno, towards the furthest westerly reaches of the Cornish peninsula. A ribbon of granite cottages, ferny gardens watered by a bubbling stream and The Wink, an endearingly named former smugglers’ pub, complete the picture of this sequestered — and formidably artistic — community.

The casual visitor, intent on reaching the pebbly beach at the end of the little road, would never guess that one of Cornwall’s most exciting and colourful gardens clings to the cliffs overhead, high above the treetops and chimneypots in the valley below.

‘When we first came here, you couldn’t see the sea,’ says Robert Moule, who, with his wife, Carol, moved to the house and its three largely precipitous acres in 1997.

‘The house had been empty and the garden abandoned for 20 years — the view was blocked by fallen trees, Monterey pines and a big yew, and the banks were a solid mass of hydrangeas, bracken and brambles.’

The challenge the couple faced proved even greater than they had at first imagined, as the land faced north-east and lay exposed to the worst and coldest of winds. Local cliffside gardens occupying the same stretch of coast — on St Michael’s Mount and at the Minack Theatre, for example — indicate that even sub-tropical planting is perfectly possible, but those gardens face south and enjoy the warmth and protection of their wooded or rocky surroundings.

The Moules were leaving Cheshire — where they had opened their garden, largely dedicated to camellias and rhododendrons, through the National Garden Scheme — and planned to make a new garden where they could continue growing and propagating these acid-loving plants. They followed the ‘soil map’ south to Devon, looking at potential properties, and were almost ready to put down roots, until they fell under the spell of the house on the cliff. They were intrigued, too, by its history: built in 1908 for a pair of Suffragettes, it had been a refuge for fellow hunger-strikers recovering from their ordeals.

With help from family and local contractors, the garden was cleared and the view at last revealed, framed by a magnificent Monterey pine. A long, level walk, bisected by a steep granite path with steps emerged from the undergrowth, to which the Moules added a network of narrow, sinuous paths that zig-zag down the slope, skirting giant outcrops of granite and trickling spring water. The design evolved organically, not on paper, as the Moules quickly learned to accept what could and couldn’t be done, given the physical constraints of the site.

However, it soon became clear that there was nowhere the couple could comfortably sit out of the wind, to admire both the view and the fruits of their labours at the end of the day. A conservatory and decking terrace were both deemed essential, even if in strong winds the view was alarming: large and treasured shrubs could be seen flying out of their planting holes before they could properly take root. The soil was (and remains) thin and stony. Taking out all the garden rubbish ‘Himalayan style’ in builders’ bags to the top of the cliff was hard enough; the very thought of trying to return it as compost or the luxury of a garden tractor and trailer is out of the question. (No wonder they look so fit.)

Inevitably then, the pair’s early years at Chygurno were a learning curve as steep as the slopes they were attempting to cultivate. Many of the more tender or exotic plants the Moules had cherished were seriously damaged or killed — or simply blown away. Saddened but undeterred, they replaced proteas and leucadendrons, Metrosideros (a native of seaside locations in New Zealand) and Geranium maderense with phormiums, grasses, grevilleas, tough fan palms and tree ferns, underplanted with hemerocallis, iris, kniphofias, crocosmias, schizostylis, osteospermums and agapanthus — all of which, planted when still small, stayed snug in their holes and proved to be tolerant of strong, cold winds.

Wherever possible, the couple take out the tops of trees and shrubs, ‘otherwise the wind will’, and, where plants have been blown over, staking and regular hard pruning have become essential. The wonderful display of pot-grown succulents and dinner-plate-sized aeoniums that greets the visitor on arrival are wrapped in fleece and overwintered in an unheated greenhouse.

Nevertheless, their important collection of rhododendrons and camellias, lovingly transported in pots from Cheshire, has for the most part flourished. As we wander through the garden, the Moules appraise them with affection, pointing out an unusually scented pink azalea ‘Soir de Paris’, the furry-leafed Rhododendron ‘Teddy Bear’ and peachy-flowered R. ‘Unique’. Camellia ‘Lamorna’, raised from a self-sown seedling found in the garden, deserves a special mention. It’s a ‘self-grooming’, pink williamsii type that flowers from December to Easter — a much-appreciated contribution to the camellia world.

The steeply sloping site invites consideration both from above and below. There are ‘classic’ Cornish plants in abundance, but all demand a second glance. The fuchsia, for example, is no ordinary fuchsia, but F. boliviana, with extraordinary long flowers and compact and colourful. Hypericum cultivars in the Magical Series, such as ‘Red Flame’, make a splash. Crocosmia, practically a weed in Cornwall, is represented by the best of them all, ‘Lucifer’.

Squeezing past a shoulder of granite, a sheltered dip in the slope reveals a nest of tree ferns. The Moules exchange glances. ‘It was a skiing holiday or the tree ferns!’ they laugh, although they now have dozens more self-sown tree ferns to dispose of in a garden already brimful of plants.

The past year has seen an increase in pollinators in the garden, especially solitary, ground-nesting bees and wasps. Dr Moule attributes this to a deliberate policy of leaving the ground as undisturbed as possible by weeding as little as possible. In such a physically demanding garden, it is good to see a little less labour rewarded.

The gardens of Chygurno, Lamorna, Penzance, Cornwall, open on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 2pm–5pm, April–September, and on selected days for the National Garden Scheme.

This feature originally appeared in the July 8, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

I am a child of the post-war years of make do and mend. We grew our own fruit and vegetables and gave away our surpluses. Some ended up in the village greengrocer. There were no deep freezes, so we bottled our soft fruit, cherries and plums, and salted away our beans. Potatoes were kept in wooden boxes in a dark shed and root vegetables, such as coarse old carrots and parsnips (which I loathed), were stored in clamps.

My grandfather was Dean of the Royal School of Mines, which had been damaged by bombing in the war. The contractors who repaired it overestimated the quantity of glass they would need and he was able to acquire the leftovers — all building materials were hard to come by — from which he made a small greenhouse. I remember calceolarias in spring (query — why does no one grow them today?), tomatoes in summer, chrysanthemums in autumn and the smell of paraffin stoves to keep out the frost.

We had two gardeners who netted the fruit, mounded up the potatoes, tied in the sweet peas and mowed the lawns with an elderly push-me mower, which (when it wasn’t in need of repair) left beautiful stripes in the grass. They also chopped wood and felled large trees with a huge two-man saw, 10ft long with formidable teeth, which my father eventually gave to a museum of garden tools in Cornwall.

Those two men (Mr Bond the head gardener and his assistant Smith, as we called them) were village men, able and intelligent, but poorly educated. When Smith chalked the names of potatoes on the wooden boxes he reversed the S in 'Majestic', which always made me wonder how he spelt his own name. Both were hard-working, dependable and always willing to talk to Master Charles about the annuals and bulbs that I grew in ‘my’ garden — all for a wage of £6 or £7 a week.

Fast forward to 2026. Today’s gardeners could not be more different. They are well educated and well qualified. They have followed courses and passed exams. They take initiatives, come with good ideas and spend their holidays visiting other people’s gardens. They know their own worth — and they are still underpaid.

Last year, I wrote a piece for Country Life about three young gardeners who were beginning to make a mark in their world. One worked for the National Trust, one for the RHS and the third was already second-in-command at Great Dixter in East Sussex. They were grateful for the privilege of working in beautiful and fascinating gardens with the freedom to help them develop. They all gave thanks for the encouragement they received when training and working within a large organisation. They were happy employees who expected their careers to develop within the structures of their current employers.

Twelve months later, two of them have already left in search of better prospects.

The internal promotion for which they hoped did not materialise soon enough. They were ready for greater responsibility and the opportunity to learn new skills, but it became clear that the only way they would achieve this would be in new jobs.

In this, they resemble the journeymen gardeners of late-Victorian and Edwardian times, who used to move on to gain experience in different gardens, pushing their way up the hierachy in the hope eventually of becoming head gardeners in charge of a large estate or, perhaps, of owning their own nursery. The fact is that the HR department of almost any organisation today cannot cope with ambitious employees who want to better themselves, but feel held back.

Six weeks ago, I attended a study day in Maurice Foster’s famous plantsman’s garden at White House Farm in Kent. There were about 30 of us, including three of the garden’s trustees, extremely knowledgeable and experienced horticulturists. Apart from a few old buffers like me, almost all the participants were young, well-educated and ambitious millennials and zoomers, including some who work for none other than the National Trust, the RHS and Great Dixter. All were happy to fork out for the experience and spend all Sunday talking to Foster, exploring his 15 acres and meeting new plants — and all went away loaded not only with new knowledge, but also with pots and cuttings of plants to propagate for themselves.

The future of horticulture is safe in the hands of these energetic and committed 20-somethings, but what about the old-style gardeners? I have lost contact with Smith, but Mr Bond’s children had an education and job opportunities that their parents lacked. Some of his grandchildren went to university. None of them will ever pursue a career in horticulture, but one of them loves his own garden and told me he remembers that his grandfather showed him how to mound up potatoes and tie in sweet peas.

This feature originally appeared in the July 8, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Placing a little building of some sort, perhaps a folly, a faux ruin or other structure as a focal point in the distance was a favourite trick of the 18th-century landscape garden creators. Such ‘eye-catchers’ were favoured by the likes of William Kent and Capability Brown, for they created visual drama, sometimes also suggesting the estate in question extended far beyond its actual boundaries.

Are any of those eye-catchers as remarkable as the incidental one seen from Underhill House in the pretty Sussex village of East Dean? From the house terrace, you look southwards to view the garden, which rolls down a gentle slope, terminating at a dense hedgerow of mixed shrubs and trees. Beyond it, your gaze follows a steep upward trajectory of sheep-grazed pastures, up to the edge of the famous Beachy Head cliff and the most fascinating of ‘follies’: the Belle Tout lighthouse. Built in 1832–34, for some 70 years it saved numerous sea-going vessels from a hazardous stretch of coast littered with sharp reefs, where thousands of ships have been wrecked over the centuries.

This undulating chalk landscape, grazed by local Southdown sheep and crossed by old droveways and smugglers’ paths, has its own specialised flora, attuned to the fast drainage and alkalinity. Flowers such as bird’s-foot trefoil and salad burnets thrive in its ‘rendzina’ — a geologically interesting loamy and limey soil that enriches the gardens in the valleys, yet is stony to work. As you dig, pieces of chalk and flint emerge all the time, among what is also quite fertile ground.

From 2021 onwards, owner Joanne Dove focused first on substantial internal refurbish- ments to the attractive flint-and-brick house, before turning to the garden. For the latter, three years ago she engaged landscape designer Andy Sturgeon, who is based nearby in Brighton, to modernise the terrace and pool area and refresh the planting everywhere. His plan has been to bring more harmony and ease of circulation into the east-facing front courtyard and especially to the main gardens, which extend for some distance to the east and south.

The main terrace was remodelled to improve space for entertaining and dining, bordered by a substantial raised bed, walled with traditional bricks and flints that match the house elevations. Paving slabs in a near-white limestone harmonise with numerous chalky- coloured stones embedded in the house walls. It also gives the pool surround a fresh and modern look, replacing tired and slippery Yorkstone laid many decades ago and not really in keeping with the local vernacular.

No changes needed to be made to the shape of the existing swimming pool, which already had a sympathetically curved southern edge, attractively mirroring the contours of the land- scape. It was, however, relined with shimmering mosaic tiles in many shades of blue, grey and green, suggesting the colours of the sea, just over the cliff edge on the horizon.

In such an open situation, planting a garden in an interesting and sustainable way can be demanding. It may bake in long hours of sunshine, absorbing the humid, salty air of the nearby coast; it can also be plunged into hours of foggy mystery when a sea mist rolls in.

The long bed separating the limestone terrace from the pool area has an inviting, Mediterranean feel with low, mounding shrubs and eruptions of small, seasonal flowers, reminiscent of a flowery garrigue hillside in spring. Its occupants include cistuses, such as C. creticus, a native of the Levant with crumpled pink petals, and its showier cousin, C. x purpureus.

The rock-loving Euphorbia seguieriana brings shots of lemon and lime in its bright foliage and flowers and the tough little daisy bush Olearia x haastii puts out masses of nectar-rich flowers enjoyed by various pollinators. The tumbling herb Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Prostratus’ always requires careful positioning to show off its propensity to imitate a waterfall; in the terrace bed, it overhangs the retaining wall very prettily.

Herbaceous flowers include fluttering, white Gaura lindheimeri, sword-leaved Libertia grandiflora, salvias in variety and the invaluable little daisy Erigeron kar-vinskianus. Given a chance, it sows itself into every nook and cranny. Here, it makes a pretty edging to the brickwork, picking up the wall’s multitude of pink and dark-rose tones.

Below the pool lies the Rose Walk, with its various roses in pastel pinks and peach, joined by ‘Munstead’ lavenders, foxgloves and felty-leaved Jerusalem sage, Phlomis fruticosa. A lawn beside it encourages eastward exploration, towards an exceptionally appro- priate garden building for this location — a corrugated metal shepherd’s hut, of exactly the type used in the area for centuries, where shepherds watched their flocks and moved the wheeled huts over the Downs as required. No shepherd would recognise its interior, however, which is both a dry sauna and a con-venient hide for watching local wildlife.

‘This is where the foxes and badgers come through,’ says Dove. ‘The sauna is for red-light therapy and infrared; if you’re sitting in it from about 5pm, it’s like rush hour, with all sorts of wildlife coming by. They don’t know you’re there behind the glass.’

The easternmost area slopes considerably, among thinned-out trees, and is devoted to wildflowers. Lawns and a curvaceous bed of shrubs lead to a wildlife pond and, at the lowest point, a slender, productive kitchen garden and small greenhouse, which is used for raising melons and tomatoes. ‘The view from the lower garden is really nice, looking out to all the curves in the hills,’ says Dove.

Sight of the hilltop Belle Tout disappears — and as suddenly reappears — depending upon where you are in the garden. Having been decommissioned in 1902 in favour of a brighter, new lighthouse at Beachy Head, it now serves as a high-end B&B and a curiosity for walkers on the Seven Sisters footpath.

‘We are really blessed to have that view,’ Dove observes. ‘The lighthouse has already been moved once; it was brought further inland from the old cliff edge, but the cliffs continue to erode. I would be sad if it ever goes because it’s such an interesting focal point.’

Indeed it is, but perhaps the lighthouse, with its 360-degree view, is also fortunate to see pretty Underhill House in the distant valley, snugly settled into its charming garden.

This feature originally appeared in the July 1, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

I'm not much of a winter kitchen gardener. I’ll clear up some untidy areas, rake fallen tree leaves onto beds to mulch and enrich and prune where pruning is needed, but I’m rarely looking for excuses to compact wet soil, acquire damp knees or feel the wind exploring any gaps in the completeness of my clothing. March to November is the time I am naturally drawn to the garden and that means there is rarely a day when I don’t have borage (Borago officinalis) for company; it is one of the few constants of my favoured months and its lifting presence stops just this side of jolly to ensure I never tire of it.

Having intentionally grown borage once, it seems to have moved in for good, popping up as and where it fancies, the earliest self-seeders announcing that spring really is upon us.

For those new to it, borage is easy to grow, germinating readily when sown direct from April until around midsummer. You can even sow earlier, mimicking Nature by scattering a handful of seed directly into the soil in autumn for early flowers in spring. Being native to the Mediterranean region, a sunny, well-drained spot is where borage is happiest, although in my experience it will grow just about anywhere with reasonable light levels that’s not waterlogged. Allow 20in or so between plants and expect it to reach 23in–30in tall. If you have an as-yet-unused corner or a medium pot (multi-purpose peat-free compost is best) at your disposal, borage is just about the perfect low-maintenance plant to bring a little life to it as you decide on your longer-term plans.

Borage grows to a medium-sized plant, with soft, fleshy leaves and flowers that are most commonly blue, although it is also available with white flowers (‘Alba’), and you might find ‘Bill Archer’ with its cream variegated leaves. The star-shaped flowers of each are a delight, having five petals arranged in pointed triangles. Whichever variety you go for will offer a precious destination for bees and other beneficial insects that starts early and carries on through spring, summer and much of autumn. Grow them for a while and you might find some distinctly purple/pink flowers appear among the self-seeders.

Borage is an excellent companion plant, with its ability to draw in pollinators making it especially good next to fruit such as tomatoes, which it also apparently serves to protect from tomato hornworm by confusing it with its scent.

As much as I love borage’s optimistic visual punctuation, I equally look forward to its flavour. The young leaves and flowers carry a gentle, cool, fresh cucumber flavour that is wonderful added to leafy salads and cocktails (in Pimm’s it's a must) or with fruit, especially strawberries. I particularly like the texture and flavour added when serving fish and seafood, too. In Italy, borage leaves are most often cooked and used to fill ravioli and other stuffed pastas.

When the flowers are at their most abundant, I freeze them in ice cubes to add to cocktails and other drinks when the sun appears: to keep the flower in the centre of the cube, add a fresh flower to each compartment of the ice tray, half fill with water, freeze and then top up and freeze again. Don’t worry about picking too many flowers, as their productivity is hard to exhaust even if you love them as much as I do and the more you pick, the more the plant produces. If you are looking to maximise your harvest, it helps to remove any tired flowers to encourage more to follow.

Borage couldn’t be easier to live with. In a couple of decades of growing, I’ve found it entirely pest and disease free, resistant to all but a serious frost and it needs staking only when plants are at their tallest and planted in a particularly windy spot. As I’ve implied, borage is a friend who likes to stay once invited into your garden; you are likely to find it springing up randomly, bringing life and colour unexpectedly, lifting the early season in just the way I’m grateful for. Equally, any plants that appear where I’d rather they didn’t are easily pulled up and cast onto the compost heap.

Mark Diacono grows edibles, both usual and unusual, at Otter Farm in Devon. His book 'Abundance: eating and living with the seasons' (Quadrille, £30) is out now.

This feature originally appeared in the July 1, 2026 print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

There can be few garden designers who have a longer relationship with a particular garden than Tania Compton has with Fonthill House in Wiltshire, for it goes back half a century before she was born: her grandparents first set eyes on each other there. ‘They were the lucky recipients of a blind date set up by [the then owners] Hugh and Lady Mary Morrison,’ she explains, ‘and met over tea on the south lawn.’ We are talking on that same south lawn today, with its tremendous views to distant Win Green and the Dorset downs. The outlook may be the same, over the titanic stone bastions that support the garden on its steep hillside, but if her grandparents were to turn around, they would be astonished to see the change behind them.

The Fonthill they knew was an enormous, many-gabled mansion with, at its centre, a Jacobean manor house, which, before the First World War, had been painstakingly dismantled and rebuilt on this new site by the architect Detmar Blow. Its owner, Hugh Morrison, was one of the richest men in Britain, thanks to his grandfather, James. Known as ‘the Napoleon of shopkeepers’, James Morrison made one of the great Victorian fortunes, starting out in haberdashery before moving into banking and railways. He bought the Fonthill estate in the early 1830s, but eventually found it too far from London and gave it, in about 1845, to his second son, Alfred, who lived there for the rest of his life. Alfred’s son, Hugh, inherited in 1897, but, as his mother showed no signs of moving out of the main house, he engaged Blow to build him a home of his own on the eastern edge of the estate.

They chose a wonderful site, on a sunny hillside sheltered from the north and east by the steep escarpment of Little Ridge Wood. In those pre-war days of cheap, abundant labour, the hillside was sculpted into great stone terraces on an almost Mycenaean scale, planted with an Edwardian abundance of roses and bedding. For the first few years, the Morrisons lived in an exquisitely reconstructed Jacobean manor, at that time called simply Little Ridge, but, after children and further inheritances, the original building was repeatedly extended and renamed Fonthill House. Photographs from the Country Life archive reveal it to have been a beautifully picturesque exercise in the 17th-century style — the kind of house of which Sir Edwin Lutyens would have been proud.

Unlike many other country-house owners, the Morrisons survived both wars with their fortune remarkably intact, but, after Hugh’s death in 1931, changing social lives and staffing shortages made huge private houses such as Fonthill almost impossible to live in and, by the early 1970s, his son, John — made Lord Margadale a few years before — had decided to demolish the whole thing.

A late campaign to get Blow’s masterpiece spot-listed, led by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and the Victorian Society, failed largely because officials at the Department of the Environment had got it muddled with one of the other houses on the estate, which they were under the impression had been demolished years before. By the time they realised their mistake, Blow’s house lay in ruins, to be replaced in 1972 by the current neo-Regency villa, which stands at the middle of the original terraces, although not, maddeningly, quite on the central axis.

Tania Compton’s involvement began about 20 years ago, in her bathing costume. ‘I was over for a swim one afternoon,’ she recalls, ‘soon after Lord Margadale [Alastair Morrison, who inherited the title in 2003] moved in, and I made some disparaging comments about the dwarf-dahlia bedding. It was something of a throwing-down-the-gauntlet put-down, but they knew changes were needed and I was the lucky person to be asked to come up with a masterplan.’ The previous two generations, as she puts it, ‘had been horse rather than horticulture aficionados’ — the first Lord Margadale established the Fonthill Stud, which bred Classic winners under his son — and the once-fine Arts-and-Crafts gardens had suffered decades of neglect, with lank leylandii hedges half hiding tumbledown fruit cages.

Her plan divided the garden into sections, enabling the work to be done in stages, keeping the best surviving trees and shrubs. The house is approached by a sinuous, mile-long drive, which crosses a bridge over Fonthill Lake, then winds gently uphill through woods and pastureland. Finally, it enters what feels like a dark, narrow cutting before emerging, in a brilliant coup de théâtre, into a huge amphitheatral space carved out of the hillside, with flights of steps sweeping up from either end above an arched central loggia. The last stretch of the drive is framed by handsome Persian ironwood trees, Parrotia persica, alternating with clipped box and standard holm oaks, Quercus ilex, underplanted with massed white narcissi, the alliums A. ‘Mont Blanc’ and A. stipitatum ‘Mount Everest’ and Japanese anemones.

To the west of the house, the unlamented leylandii have given way to three distinct spaces, their grassed centres divided by yew hedges, with the original wall along one side and a long retaining wall below, which boasts a fine collection of fan-trained figs. Closest to the new house, the Drawing Room Garden occupies the space where the 1920s drawing room once stood. Designed to feel like an extension of the house, this is one of the most intensely gardened areas, all red, purple and pink, with masses of Rosa ‘De Resht’, ’Bleu Magenta’, ‘Penelope’ and ‘Ispahan’, plus the annual poppy Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’. Beyond is the Cornus Garden, initially intended as a cricket pitch, but now dominated by a group of eight Cornus kousa var. chinensis, some standards and others multi-stemmed.

The sequence culminates in the Fountain Garden, centred on a serene William Pye fountain. In spring, its deep borders are yellow and white with Magnolia stellata and the flat white dinner-plate flowers of Viburnum plicatum, underplanted with chrome-yellow Paeonia daurica subsp. mlokosewitschii. In autumn, the colour scheme switches to pinky-purple, with Hydrangea paniculata and a 164ft ring of Sedum ‘Herbstfreude’ (now Hylotelephium × mottramianum ‘Herbstfreude’).

The south side of the house opens onto a formal lawn, supported by stone walls more than 20ft high, flanked at lower levels on either side by two further gardens — one framing the swimming pool and another, slightly wilder one centred on a small lily pond. The swimming pool sits in the middle of what had been the Edwardian rose garden, complete with Blow’s pretty corner pavilion, now wreathed in wisteria. A hedge of headily fragrant mock orange, Philadelphus ‘Belle Étoile’, runs along one side and the awkward slope towards the house is disguised by four standard Elaeagnus ‘Quicksilver’, which at first glance look like olive trees.

Of the south lawn, the designer says: ‘Given how many walls and steps and other areas of stone there are, we wanted it to offer a visual rest and be all green, yet remain structural.’ The outer three sides are enclosed by her trademark triple hedges, with clipped box sandwiched between two layers of white Rosa rugosa, their stems hidden in a bed of nepetas.

‘I use rugosa everywhere,’ she adds. ‘It looks great, it’s tough and it’s cheap as chips. If you’re creating a long rose hedge, why spend hundreds of pounds on named varieties when you can buy rugosas for 99p a pot?’

It’s a sentiment of which James Morrison would surely approve.

Tania Compton’s cornus champions

Cornus kousa var. chinensis
The most elegant of all the Chinese cornuses, with horizontally inclined, arching branches studded with beautifully spaced starry bracts, which have the profusion of blossom. It has the natural elegance of a selection over the clunkier hybrids, an abundance of dangling strawberry-red fruits and fabulous autumn colour. Its close relation, ‘China Girl’, bred in Holland in the 1970s, has slightly larger bracts, but similar refinement.

Cornus kousa ‘Miss Satomi’
This Chinese dogwood has all the attributes of C. kousa var. chinensis, but with pink rather than creamy white bracts. It’s one of the most gorgeous shrubs for any garden that has rich, neutral to acid soil that doesn’t get too dry. In full flower, it has a similar effect to Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Pink Beauty’, which makes a beautiful partner where their spreading canopies have space to make gracefully layered sheets of inflorescence.

Cornus x elwinortonii Venus
This one is the opposite of everything elegant and refined. Its bracts are the starched white handkerchiefs of the Cornus tribe, but it proved irresistible to try it at Fonthill in its Chelsea debut year, and it is thriving in the deep, humus-rich greensand on the edge of North Wood.

Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’
Where a more rounded silhouette is wanted, this American hybrid has large, rounded, overlapping bracts. It thrives in spring after a long, hot summer, so is getting more reliably dazzling for British gardens. Other than C. kousa var. chinensis, all these cornuses come with an Award of Garden Merit from the RHS.

The gardens at Fonthill are open to visitors on select days — see their website for details.

This feature originally appeared in the June 17, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

As you enter through the gatehouse arch at Broadwoodside, the centre of the first of two courtyards is dominated by an imposing iroko aviary, modelled on the fruit cages designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd for the Rothschilds at Ascott House in Buckinghamshire. This is the summer home to William, an African grey parrot, who has been in residence since the Dalrymple family — Robert, Anna and their four children — moved here in 2000. The archway and an ogee-roofed pavilion in the corner of the second, which were among their additions, gently meld with the buildings of a once-dilapidated former steading dating back to the 17th century.

Mr Dalrymple is a book designer of some renown who has worked with many of the world’s leading publishers and galleries. If one were comparing him to a bird, it would be a gimlet-eyed magpie, picking up ideas, both artistic and horticultural, and shamelessly transporting them back to his nest just outside Gifford in East Lothian. Possessed of an enquiring mind and a penchant for a play on words, as well as fingers turned deep green from more than 25 years of planning and planting the garden (indeed, it first featured in Country Life on February 22, 2007). It is also clear that he is not a man who takes himself too seriously.

Near William’s quarters, he points out a large gnarled and desiccated branch of native juniper. ‘It succeeds entirely as a Louise Bourgeois spider,’ he says, in the fruity cadences he shares with his historian brother William (after whom the chatty parrot was named), punctuated with barks of cheery laughter.

‘From whatever angle you look at it, it has a satisfactory composition. I thought I had taken pretentiousness to a new level, but actually it has gone down well with the general audience.’

We move on to a column of wood cubes alternating with short rods of glass supporting a glass sphere, which has burnt the wood below it through the sun’s refractions. ‘My daughter did a course at the furniture school down the road [Chippendale International School of Furniture] and I found these glass bars. She drilled the wood and we assembled it together; it does a Roger Ackling.’

Other gleaned examples around the garden include A Load of Balls (literally, a pile of plastic, stone and glass spheres, inspired by fashion designer Dries Van Noten’s father’s garden in Belgium) and the Three Sisters, made from leftover roofing slates and inspired by an installation at the Hannah Peschar Gallery in Surrey by Herta Keller. ‘The writing is on the wall’ (indeed it is) is inscribed in the loggia, used for feasting à la Balthazar on warm summer days, and, placed along a grassy path, a stone tablet displays ‘Ore stabit fortis arare placeto restat’, a donnish joke best read in English.

The garden cannot escape an intellectual nod to the late Ian Hamilton Finlay’s creation at Little Sparta, a mere 40 miles away. Yet this is no pastiche, as, together with the buildings new and old, each area makes sense in its context and has a harmony and lightness of touch that comes together as something traditional, yet deeply personal and original.

Mr Dalrymple’s design background is the presiding genius here and the layout is strongly linear, with repetition, rhythm and symmetry being key and each sightline considered, whether along a path to a focal point within the garden or out into the arable land and woods beyond. He uses the layout of these buildings or existing farm walls as the frames. ‘It is somehow less fanciful than simply dividing up a big garden into rooms.’

The first courtyard, with Palazzo William at its centre, was created so there is always some-thing pleasing to look out at from the house, even during long, dreich Scottish winters. It was inspired by John Stefanidis’s garden in Dorset and is laid with a chequerboard of 25 squares of cobbles, grass and neatly clipped evergreens, such as box, rosemary and teucrium, coloured seasonally by alliums and grasses, and self-seeders, including foxgloves and Verbena bonariensis, out of which rise hard clipped standard Norway maples. Mr Dalrymple admits mistakes were made in the early days. ‘We moved to a building site and I thought: “that will be depressing”, so I spent quite a lot of money on mature prunus trees that I had read about in a Penelope Hobhouse book. They had been in about six months and got canker and died. These are the replacements.’

The next hortus conclusus, beyond a low wall and reached down a step to further emphasise the change of scene, has a more child-conducive central lawn (there are now nine grandchildren), traversed by a cruciform flagstoned path. To the north is the ‘thug bed’, filled with the likes of eupatorium, macleaya and Japanese anemones. Against the sunny west-facing wall is another opportunity for a joke, ‘blackberry and apple’: Rubus fruticosus ‘Oregon Thornless’ and Estivale apples, purchased from Crocus in a sale for their formal, goblet-trained bush, but, in fact, ‘the best-tasting apple we have’.

Although Mr Dalrymple’s disciplined hand is to be seen in the repeated plantings, the symmetrical vistas, the avenue of fastigiate hornbeams that were a present from his grandmother and the pollarded circle of willows near the drive, Mrs Dalrymple does get a look in. ‘She always wants more flowers. It is a creative tension,’ he admits, with another bark of laughter. ‘It is the Vita and Harold cliché. I do the straight lines; she does the abundance.’

There are, indeed, flowers aplenty, especially in the kitchen garden, at the centre of which is a long formal pond, and areas such as the Hall Garden, on either side of a path leading from the drive to a large room used for parties and tour groups, which has something more of the sweet disorder favoured by Mrs Dalrymple. Limes that started off with the intention of being pleached, then turned into pompoms are now parasol-trained to shade the path. As to the planting, ‘it is really a free for all,’ says Mrs Dalrymple. ‘It starts off quite orderly in March, with a complete covering of scillas. Then you get Euphorbia epithymoides and yellow tulips and then brunnera and then it starts to become the law of the jungle.’

Order may yet prevail, as the Hall Garden has just been refreshed and replanted by Nanette Wraith, who replaced Guy Donaldson last year after he’d spent 25 years as the gardener. Do the two have plans for any new areas? ‘No bigger, thank you,’ says Mrs Dalrymple firmly.

Broadwoodside welcomes visitors by appointment, and on selected days for the National Garden Scheme — see more details at the website.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on June 24, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It's not only beauty that is in the eye of the beholder. It is, we are assured, also the answer to that perennial query: ‘What’s the difference ’twixt a wildflower and a weed?’ The Oxford English Dictionary is definitive, defining a weed as a ‘wild plant growing where it is not wanted and is in competition with cultivated plants’.

The common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), with its lovely golden head, will serve as an example. On the verge, we see it positively as prettifying, but growing on the grassy village cricket pitch, in front of the stumps, it is an obstruction that requires ‘weeding’. That’s that, then. The answer to ‘weed or wildflower?’ done and dusted.

Whether a wild plant is a weed or wildflower is a matter of its location — plus human perception. The moseying dog-walker admires the dandelion on the lane, the groundsman mowing the cricket pitch’s infield regards it as a problem. Ah, the dear old dandelion, put on Earth to rebut the wisdom of lexicographers and to weed out ontological glibness.

To itself, of course, Taraxacum officinale’s status as ‘wildflower’ or ‘weed’ is immaterial. It exists unto itself, what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant — who rather early got the hang of this being and perception stuff in The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) — posited as the state of ‘noumena’. Humans can only know things as they appear to us or as ‘phenomena’.

Neither do the 50 or so insects the dandelion supports care a fig about its classification, Kantian or otherwise. The bees of early spring are glad to visit it wherever it appears. They need the dandelion’s sweet pollen, which is as energy-giving as the primaveral sun.

In France, the dandelion, far from being in competition with cultivated plants, is a cultivated plant, a salad. Take note, too, of dandelion’s Latin tag, the officinale meaning that herbalists of the past granted it purpose as a medicinal herb — not a weed, or a wildflower mind you — and would have picked it wherever it popped up. Dandelion, among its medicinal attributes, is a powerful diuretic, hence its French name of pissenlit. Edible plants are plants. The end. Dig into history and the people of the past were clearly crop/weed/wildflower fluid.

Tollund Man, the bog-preserved corpse from the Danish Iron Age, consumed porridge containing cultivated barley and fat-hen (Chenopodium album) for his breakfast before being hanged. If the barley of his last meal was cultivated, the fat-hen may equally have been farmed or foraged.

Highly nutritious, the Iron Agers grew it or allowed it to grow — an eminently sensible approach to food provision: let the edible plant that flourishes flourish, whether wild and sown by breeze or planted by a horny-handed human with a digging stick. Fat-hen was sold by hawkers as a leafy vegetable in Britain as recently as the 18th century, yet today? It is a bane ‘weed’ of agriculture.

What did the Romans ever do for us? We may gawp in awe at Hadrian’s Wall and Bath’s baths, but the empire’s legacy also includes ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), which was introduced to the isles as a pot herb. The perennial jumped the villa wall to take root elsewhere. As John Gerard noted of ground elder in his Herball (1597), ‘where it hath once taken roote, it will hardly be gotten out again’. Centuries of gardeners wail their woeful accord.

Those gardeners, together with small children, will doubtless be bemused to find that the plants once cultivated but now damned as weeds include the stinging nettle (Urtica dioica). Fairservice, the gardener in Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817), raised it under glass as an early spring green. Oh, the irony. What we regard as the ‘weeds’ of farm and garden were made more prolific by… farming and gardening.

The turning of soil favoured poppies and the midden — the farm muck heap — was a source of nitrogen beloved by the nettle. There was, however, in the past many a virtuous link between ‘weeds’ and farming, as recorded by the plants’ common names, which are often floral memorials of their ancient utility. Galium aparine, that sticky climber of the hedge, was known as ‘goose-grass’, as it was fed to goslings and Heracleum sphondylium, the airy white umbels of which liven the lane in June, was ‘common hogweed’, as it was free fodder for porcines.

Time has hardened the distinction between wildflower and weed. As agriculture rose and rose, the plants that competed with crops took on the negative nomenclature of ‘weed’, the word itself entering the English language in the 9th century. The division was more than botanical, agricultural, it was political.

Cultivated crops, especially cereals, became regarded as signs of orthodoxy and order, whereas weeds became symbols of anarchy and wildness. It’s there in Shakespeare, always the mirror to the age, when Cordelia says of her father in King Lear, Act IV, Scene 4: 'He was met even now/ As mad as the vex’d sea — singing aloud;/ Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,/ With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo- flowers,/ Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.' Or put plainly, Lear is an insane regent wearing a parodic crown composed of the parasitic weeds choking the grain that feeds his subjects.

By the opposite token, when Gerard Manley Hopkins railed against the Victorian taming of the countryside, his chosen emblem of poetic protest was weed, not ‘wildflower’: 'What would the world be, once bereft/ Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,/ O let them be left, wildness and wet;/ Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.'

When Hopkins wrote Inversnaid (1881), the industrialisation of agriculture was in full march and the weed became more than an issue, it became an enemy. The widespread use of chemical herbicides post-1950 allowed a Final Fix to the problem of ‘weeds’. One contemporary agrichemical company boasts its herbicides ‘fight weeds with a vengeance’. You and I might ponder whether or not flora is wildflower or weed, but ‘weedkillers’ rarely make such distinction.

Weed and wildflower alike are to be suppressed. Hence all those monotone cereal fields across the land. The poppy (Papaver rhoeas) is the blood-red wildflower of Remembrance, yet for the maker of broad-leaved herbicide it is merely a menace to the sustaining corn. Thus is the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), which is the blue of sky, condemned; so, too, the little scarlet pimpernel (Lysimachia arvensis), whose name is its description, pink and shyly peeking, and corn chamomile (Anthemis arvensis), elegantly limbed and sweetly daisy-headed.

Weeds gave colour to the countryside, as well as food and habitat for our native creatures. When the weeds went, so did the wildlife. The grey partridge (Perdix perdix) declined by 92% between 1970 and 2013. The bird’s chicks are crucially dependent on insects whose hosts are arable ‘weeds’.

I am a serial re-creator of early Victorian wheatfields with their riotous wildflower/weed chromatics. I admit, my cereal yield has been a smidgeon less than conventional agriculture, but my arable wild plants have succoured the buzzing, flitting pollinators on which farming depends. The cattle have loved and thrived on the wild flora baled in the straw. I have gained, not lost. It helps to be pretty. Is that not part of the wildflower versus weed division?

I’ve deliberately sown corn chamomile, yet I have never sown broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius), a plant so plain Jane that Mrs Bennet would struggle to find it a suitor. My mistake. Although classified as ‘injurious’ in the 1959 Weeds Act, meaning that the government may enforce its removal due to toxicity/destructiveness, recent research from the Biological Husbandry Unit in New Zealand suggests that small populations of docks in pasture help prevent bloat in livestock, as well as providing mineral-rich nutrition.

The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was more right than he knew when he defined a weed as ‘a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered’ — or have been forgotten.

This feature originally appeared in the June 24, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'It is definitely the only garden I have ever designed where old-fashioned roses have been the big thing,’ is how Tom Stuart-Smith summarised his garden at Lasborough Park in Gloucestershire, designed for Julia and Sir Hans Rausing. For the man whose creations with perennials have passed into horticultural folklore, the project was definitely a one-off, yet one that he will always recall with great affection.

Whatever style of garden a designer might be asked to produce, few could fail to be entranced by the setting at Lasborough. Here, in the south-western reaches of the Cotswolds, where the limestone uplands fold gently down towards the Severn estuary, is some of the most undisturbed and beautiful countryside in south-west England.

It includes a series of secluded valleys, wrapped around by wooded hillsides so as to appear little worlds of their own. This is certainly the case as you approach Lasborough and take the narrow lane that drops down from the A46 west of Tetbury and eventually brings you to the cluster of houses close to the church before crossing the River Wells and rising gently on the far side to Lasborough Park.

Lasborough’s long history stretching back over centuries has witnessed a succession of owners. It has also benefited from some garden and landscape highlights, evidence of which survives today. The present house was originally built in the late 18th century, designed by James Wyatt, and William Emes planned the surrounding landscape.

The impressive walled garden with its long, curving south-facing wall originally dated from the early 19th century and, in the mid 19th century, Lasborough was acquired by the famous Victorian tree planter Robert Stayner Holford of nearby Westonbirt.

Characteristically, one of his additions was Lodge Avenue, a double avenue stretching the five miles from Westonbirt to Lasborough, much of which remains today. Holford lived at Lasborough for a period and he also made extensive alterations to the outbuildings and added the original freestanding glasshouse to the walled garden. During the 1920s, the little known, but distinguished garden designer George Dillistone was commissioned by the then owners, Galbraith and Eleanor Cole, to plan an ambitious reworking of the garden, but Galbraith died in 1929 and Lasborough was sold before Dillistone’s work could begin.

There were to be five more sales of the house before, in 2014, it was purchased by the Rausings, who almost immediately commissioned Mr Stuart-Smith to carry out extensive work in the gardens, the major element of which was to be the re-creation of the early-19th-century walled garden. Perhaps the most significant factor for Mr Stuart-Smith was the degree to which the work on the garden would be a partnership with Julia. She had already been diagnosed with cancer and the creation of the Lasborough garden was an absorbing project that gave her great pleasure in the final years before her death in 2024.

When Mr Stuart-Smith started work, the walled garden had effectively ceased to exist. Holford’s impressive glasshouse had disappeared by the 1920s and the designer recalls that ‘all there was in the walled garden was an oil tank, an Astroturf putting green and some Christmas trees’. Repairing — in many areas completely rebuilding — the walls took a year, after which a new glasshouse was built on the footprint of the original. The new garden that emerged is something of a celebration of the great British tradition of walled kitchen gardens — on a spectacular scale, as it extends to more than an acre.

A symmetrical pattern of beds is arranged around a grid of paths, with those extending across the garden from one side to the other giving views that demonstrate the overall scale. The central area is set out with beds in front of the new glasshouse, to one side there is a concentration of vegetables, to the other the flower garden. The beds now overflow with a combination of plants that, if there is an unfamiliar emphasis on roses in many areas, bears all the hallmarks of Mr Stuart-Smith’s skill with a complex plant palette. In some places, there are mixtures; elsewhere, a single plant is massed for effect, for instance, a block of pinky/mauve-flowered echinacea.

There is the rich mixture of flowers, fruit and vegetables essential to a traditional walled garden, growing in such quantities that there is a constantly changing kaleidoscope from month to month. In the depth of winter, tall drums of clipped beech retain their golden leaves and provide structure, as do the arches and other metalwork over which a range of apple and pear trees is immaculately trained.

More fruit is trained against the walls, especially on the long curve of the south-facing one where a medley of gages, figs, apricots, plums and pears alternates with a similarly mouthwatering range of wall shrubs and climbers, such as different Clematis viticella, white and mauve solanum and abutilons. Mingling with them all are, of course, roses, including The Generous Gardener, ‘François Juranville’ and ‘Albertine’ to name only three reliable pink-flowered old favourites. Around the garden, some choice larger wall shrubs include Magnolia delavayi, Maytenus boaria, Hoheria sexstylosa ‘Stardust’, Viburnum cinnamomifolium and Clerodendrum trichotomum var. fargesii.

Through the weeks of summer, as the beds devoted to vegetables fill out with their burgeoning crops and beans and sweet peas smother hazel wigwams, the range of plants and plant combinations creates an atmosphere of richness that on a sunny day is sheer intoxication. In May and early June, a wonderful collection of Benton irises come into flower in beds in front of the glasshouse beneath espalier pears. In some beds, shrub roses predominate, underplanted with geraniums, erigeron and other appropriate low perennials.

The David Austin-bred Scepter’d Isle and Susan Williams-Ellis; old-fashioned shrubs ‘Tuscany Superb’, ‘Charles de Mills’ and ‘Fantin-Latour’; and hybrid musk ‘Penelope’ and ‘Felicia’, form a selection of roses picked out by Mr Stuart-Smith. Elsewhere, there is a variety of shrub and perennial combinations that would keep you absorbed for hours and, in the glasshouse, in traditional kitchen-garden style, there’s a collection of pelargoniums in clay pots, including a delicious pale-pink-flowered climbing variety trained against one wall.

The walled garden is definitely the centrepiece of the new garden at Lasborough and is best viewed from the Gothic folly built by Ptolemy Dean perched on the slope above. Yet Mr Stuart-Smith’s work attended to all the areas that make up the 12 acres — as well as extending out into the park to the south and west, which gives both garden and house such an idyllic setting. When he began work, the area immediately to the west of the house had been made into an enclosed courtyard with no proper links to the pool garden nearby and the areas beyond, such as the walled garden. Since then, the pool garden has been replanted and the courtyard opened up, so it now leads to the walk that extends parallel to the walled garden. Here, long borders either side of the path are at their best in May, with repeat cornus and other shrubs mixing with a palette of spring perennials.

A little over 10 years has witnessed a transformation in the garden at Lasborough, taking it to heights not achieved at any time in its past when, all too often, a change in ownership brought a period of stability to an end. In the creation and development through its formative years, the garden gave enormous and recuperative pleasure to Julia Rausing. Today, it gives the house a setting of horticultural excellence that is a fitting complement to the centuries-old landscape that surrounds it.

George Plumptre is the former chief executive of the National Garden Scheme, for which the garden of Lasborough Park, Gloucestershire, opens.

This feature originally appeared in the June 10, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

We have been mired in the building of a glasshouse from gymnasium windows and a random door, thinking it would be cheaper than a greenhouse. True, but for a while we referred to it as ‘the Shell garage’, owing to its resemblance to a petrol station thrown up in the 1930s when motoring was a thrill. Now, it’s the Café de Pellée, a winter palace for our pelargoniums.

We hope conditions are right for the clientele — a white ceiling with roof lights and vents, glazed on three sides, because pelargoniums, as does anything under glass, need copious ventilation. If you start to find whitefly, open windows and doors and spread the pots out or get them outside. Space and shade are paramount. Ed Boers and Laura Whiley, the new proprietors of Fibrex Nurseries in Worcestershire, advocate 40% shade as optimum: this is surprising, but perhaps not when you think of them in the back porch or a Chinese takeaway. Although they seem to thrive on nonchalance, pelargoniums must be kept frost free, and dry in winter. Mr B sometimes simply de-pots and throws them in a heap under the bench until spring.

Yet come spring, pelargoniums are conversely responsive to restless grooming: manicuring of spent flowers and leaves. Luckily, keeping them kempt is both meditative and aromatherapeutic. Mr B loves to tend to the needs of a Jilly Cooper-esque cultivar such as P. ‘Clorinda’, louche and puce, yet abhors my grandmother’s zonal pelargoniums, calling them the ‘Clarice Cliff’ of the greenhouse.

My grandmother’s geraniums were guardsman-scarlet and had leaves that smelled of hot Draylon. They were planted out each summer in a military row, but were, correctly speaking, pelargoniums. Cranesbills and stork’s bills; that is the old confusion.

The geranium or cranesbill is a low northern, hardy, herbaceous perennial: the ubiquitous G. ‘Rozanne’. The pelargonium is different, being tender, generally from South Africa and known as stork’s bills owing to the fruit’s resemblance to a bird’s beak, which is part of their charm. Pelargonium species come, like liquorice, in all sorts, including zonal, ivy and, best of all, scented-leaved species and varieties.

Not being a botanist, the definition of ‘species’ has long perplexed me, but, put simply, species are the original wild forms and generally more robust, particularly when indigenous. Cultivars have been selected (and often transported across oceans) by generations of humanity, and hybrids are the result of both naturally occurring and deliberate crossbreeding.

Pelargoniums are not indigenous, but they offer extended flowering and scent from their numerous cultivars. Yet species pelargoniums are where it all began, combining subtle beauty with leaves and sometimes flowers that smell of the veldt. ‘Bonjour!’ to Pelargonium triste, the first species to reach Europe from the Cape; part of the plant library of John Tradescant by 1632.

The specific epithet derived from the Latin for sad or gloomy. It is pale, shy, scented, dormant in summer, but, on February evenings, Pelargonium triste unfolds five petals of tallow dashed with darkest plum; uncooked spiced pastries in look and smell. These damson splashes are more intense on her near cousin P. lobatum, whose evening perfume is sherbet fountains. P. lobatum’s offspring (after a coupling with P. fulgidum, which has lipstick scarlet flowers) is P. ‘Ardens’, my favourite winter flower fairy. She wears a Fortuny hat of velutinous madder smudged darkest crimson, but she has no scent.

All the above are tuberous — known colloquially as ‘gouty’ — pelargoniums, on account of their swollen basal nodes, and are difficult to propagate. This makes them all the more desirable. The garden designer Helen Dillon suggests cutting up the tuber with a bit of stem and burying the whole thing completely in light compost, praying for a plant in three months: ‘At no stage disturb the pots to see what’s happening.’

However, regular pelargoniums strike from the smallest cutting, providing presents for friends. You might like to give them P. sidoides, whose beaky purple flowers emerge from grey cashmere stems, felty, but sticky with a gum that smells sour from April until December.

They all deplore the stagnant and the damp, but P. sidoides likes Martini-dry conditions. P. odoratissimum, on the other hand, a prostrate shrublet whose candied apple scent emanates from small white flowers, revels in shaded places in the Cape woodland.

My great love of the moment — but this will change — likes just such an umbrageous corner. P. tomentosum, meaning downy, not tormented, has mossy peppermint-coloured and peppermint-scented leaves, as soft as mouse fur; tactile heaven for small children and obsessive adults. These species are worth all the attention they seek.

This feature originally appeared in the June 24, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Throughout his years of working in Germany and North America, Sir Crispin Davis dreamed of buying a country house in southern England and cultivating a garden. In fact, he has done much more than that. In addition to modernising and replanting almost every feature that he inherited at Dummer House, which he bought in 2014, he has created an important new rose garden, large and utterly delightful.

The house is a fine example of homely Georgian architecture and the estate, near Basingstoke, belonged for many years to the Terry family, who built the present house around a much older core. They were friends of the Austen family of Steventon and Chawton, and Jane, the novelist, danced with the sons of the house, of which there were seven, as well as knowing the six daughters. It was to accommodate so many children that the building grew to its present extent.

Dummer House came with 27 acres on a level site, which included a remarkably spacious main lawn stretching south towards parkland, sheep pastures and arable land beyond. A see-through group of metal deer, fashioned and shaped in outline, gives scale to the view of the parkland. Previous owners had planted a fine avenue, focused on the drawing room, of weeping silver pears Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula’. This popular small tree has a tendency to look shaggy, but Sir Crispin has trimmed and trained his as neat hemispheres on short trunks; the effect is dynamic and charming at every season, but especially in spring, when thousands of daffodils flower underneath. Nearby is a smaller lawn surrounded by mixed borders, as well as well-established trees and shrubs. A tree-like cotoneaster with many low branches makes a favourite den for grandchildren to climb up inside until they can no longer be seen.

Dummer’s structure of open spaces, hedges and specimen trees remains as Sir Crispin found it, although the herbaceous plants in the borders, bold and lavish, are almost all his introductions. Delphiniums, phloxes, salvias and peonies — some of his favourite genera — are here in plenty and he has a remarkable eye for contrasts and harmonies of plant shapes and colours. Repetition and succession planting maximise the effects. The planting of evergreens against the north wall of the house — ferns, phormiums, elaeagnus and elegantly trained yews — is superb. Throughout the garden, Sir Crispin’s plantings offer a masterclass in horticultural artistry.

Sir Crispin’s favourite plants, by far, are roses. A rose garden sums up for him the best that an English country house can offer in early summer. Dummer came with a run-down, walled kitchen garden, rather closer to the house than usual, which he decided to convert into a rose garden; it now contains some 1,000 roses. It adjoins the parish churchyard and has, as a backdrop, the south side of the 13th-century church — ‘delightfully modest,’ according to Pevsner — with a pre-Reformation tiled roof and a remarkable white-painted clapboard belfry.

There were no half-measures in creating this horticultural heaven. Sir Crispin employed the Portugal-based landscape architect Richard Westcott to help with the structural work. Roses respond to good soil, so Mr Westcott brought over a team of Portuguese workers to replace the tired earth of the entire kitchen garden, digging it out to a depth of 22in. Big machines were hired to help with this major operation and fertile fresh soil brought in. The only feature spared was a handsome, well-established quince tree, which now dominates one of the garden’s four quadrants.

As so often happens, the old kitchen garden was not a regular shape — polygonal, but not a rectangle. Nevertheless, Sir Crispin had a clear idea of the formal design and layout that he wanted. There should be a fountain at the centre, aligned on the two doors — one entering near the side of the house and the other leading out to the main garden. He drew out in detail the ground plan that he wanted and asked Mr Westcott to prepare working plans and specifications. Each of the four segments should have a distinct design and character — meandering, romantic, suitable for entertainment and a cottage garden.

This means, for example, that the ‘meandering’ garden has a wiggly layout that begs the visitor to dawdle and soak up the beauty of the roses, whereas the ‘entertainment’ garden includes a sheltered, sunken area where eight dining chairs surround a round garden table. The character of the whole walled garden is now defined not by the names of its four quadrants, but by its roses, even if the way one traverses each of the segments does confer a distinctive sense of exploration.

When it came to choosing roses, Sir Crispin turned to David Austin Roses for advice and the company sent its top rosarian Michael Marriott to help. Mr Marriott remembers that ‘Sir Crispin asked that a fair selection of the roses should be fragrant and include a good proportion that were suitable for cutting’. The upshot is that a very great number of Austin’s ‘English’ roses from 10 years ago are the main inhabitants, but mixed with the best old roses, including Rosa gallica var. officinalis, R. gallica ‘Versicolor’ and ‘Charles de Mills’.

Mr Marriott advised that no fewer than five specimens of each cultivar should be planted closely together so that they appear to develop into a thick clump — advice that Sir Crispin accepted and now endorses because, he says, the impact of the individual clumps is vastly improved.

Among Sir Crispin’s favourite David Austin roses are Desdemona, which has large, white, strongly scented flowers in small clusters, and two sumptuous sweet-scented crimson varieties, Munstead Wood and Darcey Bussell, that are now difficult to find. He praises pink Princess Anne for its long season of flower, but he also thinks very highly of many once-flowering roses — everything from ‘Versicolor’, the striped Gallica rose sometimes called ‘Rosa Mundi’, to the glorious scented ‘Fritz Nobis’, which cannot be bettered for sheer flower power early in June.

Traditional Hybrid Teas and Floribundas are not forgotten — ‘Sally Holmes’ and A Whiter Shade of Pale perform very well here, but Chandos Beauty is perhaps the best of all modern roses for its scent, colour and health, as well as its prolific production of flowers.

The underplantings are simple: lamb’s lugs, nepeta and hardy geraniums, chosen to complement the many-coloured roses discretely. Incredibly, all is maintained by just one gardener, the gifted and tireless Laura Feltham, who sustains the highest standards of cultivation. Skilled rosarians know how difficult it can be to succeed so consistently. Sir Crispin’s dream of England is today among the best modern rose gardens in private hands.

This feature originally appeared in the June 3, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'Put the brown end in the soil, the green end above it, and you’re in with a much better chance,’ said the late Yorkshire gardener Geoffrey Smith. There is no arguing with that. The trouble is that even when following these basic guidelines there are pitfalls ahead, the most crucial of which is planting depth.

It’s many years ago now that I was reprimanded by the then curator of Kew Gardens, who was watching me plant a rhododendron. ‘Too deep, Alan, too deep.’ I learned then the perils of deep planting, and now that I garden on acid soil and I am actually establishing the rhododendrons and azaleas that were but a dream in my days of gardening on chalk, his words ring in my ear.

Rhodies, as we affectionately call them, are surface rooters; bury their rootballs too deeply and they suffocate and decline to flower. I’ve learned the wisdom of planting them so that the rootball of container-grown plants sits about an inch above the surrounding soil level. This does exacerbate the drying out of the rootball in sunny weather, but mulching the soil around the plant with chipped bark will help to reduce evaporation and encourage the exploration of those upper roots. Regular watering in times of drought — especially with newly planted rhodies and azaleas — will ensure rapid establishment.

During the hot, dry period in May of this year, on soil that is acidic and sandy, I was a slave to the hosepipe as far as my new charges were concerned. They were very quick to let me know they were short of water, as the foliage would wilt dramatically. After a good soaking, the recovery was equally dramatic: the plants picked up and bristled with health after only a few hours.

The importance of planting depth is every bit as critical for the large specimen trees that now seem to be the choice of folk who acquire a new estate and want instant effect. That option is available, of course, but at a price. Trees 10ft or more high and wide, often with a price tag in the tens of thousands, will be purchased by the dozen in the hope of creating a landscape that looks mature in a matter of weeks.

Touring one such estate a month ago, in the company of Kew’s former head of the arboretum, Tony Kirkham, we sighed over tree after tree that was struggling to survive only a few years after planting. Some were already dead, towering specimens devoid of leaf and brittle of wood; swarthy skeletons against a forget-me-not-blue sky. The cause of the problem in each and every case was deep planting.

In the same way that established trees are susceptible to changes in the water table, so trees that have been container-grown or containerised later in life are equally sensitive to a change in the level of planting. When committed to their new earth, the surface of the rootball should sit level with the surface, not 7in–11in deeper as was the case with so many of the sad specimens we saw. One can bemoan the waste of money on a tree that cost several thousand pounds, but, more than that, the loss of a formerly healthy specimen is agonising for a gardener to behold.

Why are trees planted too deeply? Probably in the belief that being tall they need greater anchorage, which deeper planting will provide. Stability is far better afforded by guy ropes that can be provided in the first year or two of establishment and removed once the tree has anchored itself. The problem is not confined to large specimens. Last week, I bought two pot-grown Japanese maples and planted them in tubs. I already have a couple that were established a few months ago. I had no reason to believe that the newcomers would not do the same, but they sulked. Then the likely reason dawned on me and I scraped away at the compost at the foot of the stem on one of them. Three inches down, I found the first root.

As rhododendrons and azaleas do, Japanese maples resent deep planting. The top of the roots that emanate from the base of the stem should be just visible on the surface of the compost, then they will romp away.

The base of the trunk or stem on any tree is recognisable, as it is generally swollen immediately above the emerging roots — the brown bit that Mr Smith told us needs to go in the soil. Let that swollen stem base be your guide and your means of ensuring the survival of both the tree and your sanity.

'Chatsworth: The gardens and the people who made them' by Alan Titchmarsh is out now (Ebury, £35).

This feature originally appeared in the June 17, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It was a small sepia advert in a Sunday magazine that first caught Delia Broke’s eye 27 years ago. ‘It mentioned a designer called Arne Maynard and I wrote him a letter,’ Mrs Broke remembers. ‘He arrived with three bunches of flowers and told me to shut my eyes. When I opened them, I had to point immediately to the bunch I liked best.’ Almost three decades later, the garden at Holme Hale Hall continues to be a spectacularly successful collaboration, where the colours and tones of the planting scheme are shifting and dynamic, yet remain coherent across every space, and where the relationship between client and designer has been a consistent delight.

‘Our only instruction was that it must stay relaxed, with children, dogs and football,’ says Mrs Broke. An artist and florist, she wanted more flowers to bring into the house, too, and for the foraged wreaths she fashions each month, ‘a way of seeing what’s in the garden: I want to remember it, like painting a picture’. Mr Maynard recalls: ‘Delia initially brought me in to advise on an area where a tree had come down, but I was immediately taken with the walled garden. I’ve always had a passion for them: they offer enclosure, security and, as the edges soften, become incredibly romantic.’

The hall owes its Continental warmth to a visionary previous owner, Robert Farrand. In the early 1800s, rich from grain and fresh from his Grand Tour, he moulded the original Elizabethan building into an Italianate villa and swapped the straight driveway for a sinuous curve through parkland. Farrand added a sprinkle of everything fashionable at the time: brick and slate stables, a laundry, kennels, a pond with wrought-iron bridges and a cylindrical dovecote with his coat of arms.

To complete the scene, he built a walled kitchen garden, but, unusually, decided to attach it to the house. ‘What makes it so special are the low railings chosen so the garden was immediately visible as you approach,’ points out Mr Maynard. ‘It isn’t a garden to be hidden away to grow vegetables, it is one to be celebrated as a major part of the garden as a whole.’ The place had fallen into disrepair by the time the Brokes inherited it in the mid 1980s, but there was a magnificent and enormous wisteria — already well established in an 1873 photograph — clambering over the shuttered windows and the soft yellow render of the walls.

Mr Maynard’s masterstroke was to divide the walled garden into three compartments, unfolding as an enfilade through clipped hornbeam and crab apple hedges, each with distinct colour palettes and identities. The first is the most classic: a cruciform axis of brick-edged gravel paths, with trained apple trees over an ironwork tunnel down the centre, creates four productive quarters for vegetables, soft fruit and companion annuals, such as nicotiana and cornflowers. Around the perimeter are deep curving beds for shrubs and perennials, where ‘we chose pastels — soft pinks, mauves and lemons — that picked out the colours of the house,’ Mr Maynard explains.

Soft spires of Verbascum (Cotswold Group) ‘Gainsborough’, apricot Alcalthaea suffru-tescens ‘Parkallee’, Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Purpurea’ and creamy batons of Actaea cordifolia ‘Blickfang’ are threaded through repeated mounds of Astrantia ‘Roma’ and Geranium pratense ‘Mrs Kendall Clark’. Dotted amid the bronzes and buttermilks are silver drifts of Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Valerie Finnis’, A. absinthium ‘Lambrook Silver’ and Stachys byzantina. Succisa pratensis ‘Peddar’s Pink’ (a native scabious that grows along a local footpath) scatters itself along the front. Plants are loosely grouped, with outliers drifting away from the main clump, and a few thrown over to the far side of a path so the effect doesn’t abruptly end. The placement is so skilful that it all looks good in every combination around the entire circumference.

The second compartment holds a parterre of L-shaped, box-edged beds designed to reach a crescendo in late summer and autumn, with a hotter slant towards orange, burnt-toffee and plum shades. Digitalis ferruginea and the coppery foliage of Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora ‘Coleton Fishacre’ (also called ‘Gerbe d’Or’) pick up on the orange-eyed blooms of Buddleja x weyeriana ‘Moonlight’. Dahlias, including D. ‘Café au Lait’, ‘Sylvia’, ‘David Howard’ and ‘Henriette’, are added to a vibrant mix of heleniums, eupatoriums, Rudbeckia triloba ‘Prairie Glow’ and many Michaelmas daisies. Symphyotrichum laeve ‘Le Moutiers’ is delicate with dark stems, useful as it runs in sandy soil rather than clumping, threading through its neighbours, and Symphyotrichum ‘Coombe Fishacre’ is another variety that is light on its feet.

Entering the third compartment, Mrs Broke declares, ‘is going on holiday to Provence’. The existing swimming pool was re-tiled in a soft green and encircled by giant terracotta pots full of scabious and pelargoniums, frothed around by lavenders, Mexican daisy and Alchemilla mollis planted directly into the gravel. Espaliered whitebeams create a cool, pared-back corridor, neat box cubes around their feet. A hidden tennis court lies at the very end, the south wall housing both an ancient pear and a perfectly preserved apple store.

Mr Maynard planted the garden in 2000, the same year he won his first Chelsea Gold medal. Two years later, he returned to reorganise the front lawn and ‘enhance the sense of place’, adding yew beehives beside the door, copper beech hedging and cloud-pruned, box edged beds filled with a mix of ginger biscuity Miscanthus sinensis ‘Kleine Fontäne’, Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Fascination’ and scattered wild chicory. In 2016, he tweaked the perennial borders, reducing some of the more thuggish astrantias and persicaria, and adding more topiary for winter structure.

‘I still consider this design to be one of my favourites,’ Mr Maynard acknowledges, ‘but the most important element in any garden is the gardener who cares for and continues to develop it.’

For the past eight years, head gardener Chris Marchand has skilfully main- tained that fine balance. ‘The perennial borders are a lot of work,’ he admits, ‘because the crucial part of the job is editing, the constant micro-decisions of what to encourage or take out.’ Every bed is mulched heavily each winter, which ‘doesn’t add much richness,’ says Mr Marchand, ‘but it does add structure’. Although the planting was designed to cope with Norfolk’s dry sandy conditions, he adds, ‘our soil needs to hold water. The trick is to never let it dry out’.

Self-seeding is encouraged; recently, it has been Digitalis lutea that has merrily thrown itself about. ‘Everything is dynamic and you get accidents,’ explains Mr Marchand. ‘You can’t panic and stick things in or grab something colourful to plug a gap, otherwise you lose the overall character’. Mrs Broke agrees: ‘If something isn’t working, we call Arne and ask about a replacement. We develop it, but try to stay true to what he first envisaged.’

Holme Hale Hall, Norfolk, holds occasional openings through the National Garden Scheme — see more details.

This feature originally appeared in the May 27, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'Sissinghurst, as I see it, is an amalgam of peaks and troughs,' wrote the great Christopher Lloyd in Country Life in 1996.

'On the peaks its reputation hangs,' he continues. 'In contrast, there are areas where little seems to happening... worst of all is the area called Delos, outside the entrance to the Priest's House. Why this has never been taken by the scruff beats me. I know if faces north and that cold winds sometimes blow through it, but we are talking about Kent when all's said and done. Delos seems to have mesmerised generations of gardeners into a state of number helplessness.'

Lloyd would no doubt be delighted, because over the last couple of years, Dan Pearson and the National Trust's team of gardeners at Sissinghurst have done just that. This neglected corner of one of England's most celebrated gardens has finally been completed according to the original vision of Vita Sackville-West.

The story of the Delos garden began in 1935. Following a trip to the Greek island, Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicolson, were inspired to re-create its essence in their own garden at Sissinghurst. In 1953, the author and garden designer commented: ‘This has not been a success so far, but perhaps some day it will come right.’ The project had been blighted by both the Kent climate and the garden’s north-facing position.

It might have taken more than 90 years, but National Trust staff and landscape designer Pearson — a multiple Chelsea gold medallist — have worked in partnership to bring to life the couple’s vision to life. They've added gritty topsoil, raised terracing and put in about 6,000 typically Mediterranean perennials, as well as numerous other plants. Now, the work is done, and the Delos garden is open to the public.

‘From towering thistles and zesty euphorbias to frilled Greek horehound and the bright flowers of the Cretan rockrose, the plant combinations here are endlessly beautiful, interesting and evocative,’ says Sissinghurst senior gardener Richard Gravett.

‘Delos is a part of the conversation around using water more wisely and how we might be gardening in a changing climate. In the recent heatwave, the plants in Delos have kept performing, whereas some other plants in the garden have shown signs of stress.’

See more at the Sissinghurst page on the National Trust's website.

A shorter version of this story originally appears in the print edition of Country Life of June 17, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

For five glorious days, London’s Garden Museum will become a verdant tapestry of early summer flowers, blooming profusely from every corner of the museum's medieval core to celebrate British Flowers Week. The takeover from June 17-21, 2026, comes courtesy of five leading floral designers whose large-scale installations will showcase the beauty and breadth of exclusively British-grown blooms, uniting florists, growers and flower-lovers in an event that has come to mark the start of the summer horticultural calendar. June is the zenith of the botanical year.

This year’s installations will take inspiration from the painter and plantsman Cedric Morris and his wild, bohemian garden at Benton End, which is also the subject of the Garden Museum’s summer exhibition, Benton End: A Paradise of Pollen and Paint.

The Garden Museum’s festivities align with the annual British Flowers Week campaign, founded by Flowers From the Farm, a pioneering trade association made up of more than 1,000 British growers that promotes a sustainable cut-flower industry.

British flowers account for only 20% of cut flowers sold in Britain, though this number is on the steady rise thanks to the efforts of British Flowers Week and the designers and consumers who champion seasonal blooms. As a country of gardeners, though, we can do better.

Buying imported flowers supports an industry with a large carbon footprint and completely unregulated chemical usage. Bouquets can carry up to 1,000 times more chemical concentrations than is allowed on food, increasing the likelihood of cancers and birth defects for growers, florists and their children. No self-respecting flower-lover would fill their vases with them, let alone dream of burying their faces in a bunch and inhaling deeply.

The Garden Museum’s upcoming efforts are a true celebration of British blooms, artfully arranged for your sensorial pleasure by five designers: botanical artist and researcher Cynthia Fan, Vervain Floral Design, naturalist and grower Nate Moss, Elder & Iris and dancer-turned-grower Andy Monaghan. Each installation celebrates the bounty of a British summer in its own way and take loose inspiration from an aspect of Cedric Morris’s work; the Vervain installation, for example, will be a chromatic painters palette of lush flowers, each hue filling corten steel bowls to mimic the texture of paint on a canvas. Long gone are the days of the crumbly green styrofoam bricks that once were omnipresent in all large scale flower arrangements — Vervain’s design has been grown by then and arranged using sustainable mechanics such as flower frogs.

Cynthia Fan’s museum installation will speak to the art and science of botanical hybridisation, magnifying plant structures that naturally occur in the wild, without human interference, in order for people to better appreciate them. By assembling felled logs from wild places around London, her work seeks to create a microcosm of seasonality and is a powerfully moving portrait of finding beauty in the subtleties of nature. In her hands, every branch and leaf is honoured as much as the blousiest bloom.

Nate Moss’s work is intrinsically linked to the ecology of native species and their exchange with pollinators, wildlife and the landscape as a whole, and rather than planting in advance, he lets the seasons dictate what is truly of the moment. His woodland glade installation, carpeted with own-grown and foraged wildflowers, will also feature moths and nightingales.

The tide is, thankfully, turning, and every year growers report dramatically increased demand for their wares. In the last five years, the value of imported stems has fallen by nearly 10%. Britain has spoken and we want more fragrant, wild and natural, vital and characterful, sun-kissed, rain-soaked, beautiful and seasonal flowers.

Visit the Garden Museum's website for more information.

From the south terrace of Ferne Park, the double avenue of 400 lime trees lead out towards the hazy distance where, on the rise of Cranborne Chase, a stand of beeches marks the site of the Bronze Age Win Green bowl barrow. This is the highest point in the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, where the ancient ox drove runs east/west, linking the chase to Salisbury in Wiltshire and Shaftesbury in Dorset over the county border. Equally breathtaking is the view from the front steps of the house, which faces north to the rolling greensand hills in the Vale of Wardour. Little wonder that there has been a settlement here since 1225.

The surprise is that the house that commands this view and the gardens and parkland that surround it have only been here for 25 years. When Lord and Lady Rothermere bought the estate, it covered 200 acres and was derelict: there was no house and everything that could be sold had been. Today, the estate encompasses 2,000 acres, of which the garden covers about 28 acres, providing cut flowers, houseplants, vegetables, fruit and eggs. The 100-acre park surrounding the garden has been substantially replanted and is now home to a herd of White Park heritage cattle.

‘When I went with my husband to look at Ferne,’ recalls Lady Rothermere of her first sight of the estate in March 1999, ‘I had no desire to build a house. To create a garden certainly wasn’t in my future plans.’ Yet, as they rolled down the A30 and the landscape opened up before them, they could not help but be smitten. ‘Our decision to move was very impulsive, but we were young.’

It was a bold move, as the estate had been in decline for 80 years. The Douglas-Hamiltons, the last family to live at Ferne Park, had left in the 1920s and bequeathed all to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection, a charity set up in 1912 by the wife of the 13th Duke of Hamilton. The approach would have deterred all but the stout-hearted: a dead sheep lay beside the drive and the broken entrance gate was held up by orange twine. Many of the trees in the park had been blown up when the army had used it as a training ground during the Second World War. Those hardwoods that survived the bombardment had been cut down and sold to raise money, leaving only self-seeded sycamores.

As for the garden, it was piled with rubble, brick, broken glass and had been overrun by laurels and Japanese knotweed. ‘You really couldn’t see 10ft in front of you,’ recalls Lady Rothermere. What had been a grass court on the south lawn had been dug out, leaving a huge bank of spoil and in one of what transpired to be two walled gardens they found an old sign telling people they could dump their rubbish for £50 a load. They hadn’t identified the walled gardens at first because the walls had fallen down as water got in after the coping stones had been removed and sold. ‘There was this troubling silence,’ remembers Lady Rothermere. ‘It really made me think — no, there’s nothing wrong — there’s just nowhere for the birds.’

Quinlan Terry was commissioned to build a new house (Country Life, May 5 and 12, 2010), with the two wings one can see today added at a later date by his son, Francis Terry. Meanwhile, the vast clearance work, which involved digging up concrete yards and removing asbestos from barns, meant that it was a good couple of years before the garden could even be considered. To whom should the Rothermeres turn for advice?

In 1997, Lady Rothermere had met Rupert Golby at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which she was visiting as her father-in-law, the then Lord Rothermere, had sponsored a show garden for the Evening Standard magazine. The adjacent garden had been designed by Mr Golby for Country Life to celebrate the magazine’s centenary. ‘I went in and asked Rupert a few questions. I really didn’t know anything about gardens or gardening at all and had no background in horticulture. I made a mental note that if ever I’d like to have help I would ask him.’

When Mr Golby first visited Ferne Park, there was still no house and the garden looked like a building site. ‘He was shocked,’ remembers Lady Rothermere. Shocked, but not undaunted, as he had honed his skills at RHS Wisley in Surrey, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and with renowned garden designer Rosemary Verey, not to mention in many previous garden-creation schemes.

Unusually for a project of this size, there was no masterplan and areas have been developed bit by bit. The site is mostly flat, but with so much rubble and overgrowth — and bear in mind that this was before Google Earth had been invented — it took a long time to see it in its entirety and to gain that crucial understanding of the topography. ‘The design of the garden,’ Mr Golby explains today, ‘was strongly led by the landform itself. Rather than fighting the unusual and diverse variety of levels, we have embraced and enhanced the variety of conditions we found. This enabled a logical formality around the house, which rapidly dissolves into the broader, beautiful, wild Dorset landscape, where thousands of new trees have added to the romantic wooded scene.’

Since acquiring Ferne Park, Lady Rothermere had taken a course at the English Gardening School, where she had been taught by experts who included the rosarian and Country Life contributor Charles Quest-Ritson. She had also begun to visit gardens and to build up a picture of what she liked and did not like. ‘I don’t like going into a garden and turning around. I think that a garden should lead you through it like a narrative, it should tell a story and tell it to you subliminally, so you’re not really aware of it, you’re feeling it and sensing it.’ There was also a need for symmetry to work with the house.

Inspiration came from many sources, from Rousham in Oxfordshire and the rare brilliance of that master of design William Kent and the romantic ruins at Ninfa in Italy, where Mr Golby had worked one summer in 1985. Other influences included the gardens made by Nancy Lancaster at Haseley Court, Oxfordshire, as well as Kelmarsh Hall and Cottesbrooke Hall in Northamptonshire. The late Lady Salisbury, who restored the gardens at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, was a great friend and inspiration.

With so much to do, areas were tackled one at a time; the orchard first: ‘I came in a van with all the fruit trees — quinces, apples, plums,’ recalls Mr Golby. Today, the fruit trees are comfortable veterans, there is a large pollarded mulberry, a circle of cobnuts and, in spring, Dactylorhiza orchids appear amid the long grass, as do clouds of camassias, a plant that reappears throughout the garden, providing that reassuring repetition.

A tour of German and Belgian tree nurseries — English nurseries were not then set up to supply the quantity and size needed — with Mark Fane of Crocus, which had managed the original landscaping, was the first step in the mass planting of trees. These would provide an essential buffer against the prevailing southwesterlies. ‘It’s very easy to sit out in the garden and enjoy it now,’ says Lady Rothermere. ‘Back then, it was like sitting out next to the North Atlantic, it was so windy.’

The double avenue of Tilia x europaea ‘Pallida’ was planted in three stages, as the land for the South Park was not bought until 10 years later, but all has now knitted together. Remarkably, not a single tree has been lost, although Ferne is on fast-draining greensand. Regular watering was vital: Lady Rothermere was known to disappear in the middle of a dinner party to move the hoses from one tree to another.

There were plant expeditions: ‘I remember a visit to the Isle of Wight to look at nerines with Rupert,’ says Lady Rothermere, who relished her introduction to the world of horticultural expertise: ‘Everybody was so welcoming and kind and helpful.’ The nerine collection is now housed along the wall of the greenhouse in the kitchen garden. The pair scoured reclamation yards, too, bringing finds that lend a sense of history and of permanence to the new garden. For many years, Mr Golby drove down from his home in Oxfordshire to Ferne Park every fortnight — sometimes every week — to keep a watchful eye on the garden’s gradual development. The tradition became known as a Ferne Friday.

The new Palladian house, despite being built with local Chilmark stone, stood out rather starkly from its surroundings in the early days. Mr Golby resolved this by reducing the area of gravel left by the architects and bringing the grass closer to the south front, with mown turf paths between rectangles of long grass. This meadow merged with that under the double lime avenues — ‘I had planned beech trees,’ admits Lady Rothermere, ‘but Jonathan chose limes, being tougher and just as beautiful. He was right.’

All was planted with wild Narcissus lobularis and orchids and seeded with wildflowers. Mat Reese, who had previously worked at Great Dixter in East Sussex and was at that point head gardener at Ferne Park, drove over with a horsebox full of hay gathered from the wildflower meadow in the Dixter orchard. Gardens of clipped beech and yew to east and west of the house further helped to anchor the building and, below the balustrade, on either side of the central steps that lead up to the South Terrace (perfect for eating outdoors in summer) ran two herbaceous borders. The final touch was the dramatic central box parterre, inspired by those at Hatfield House and is a scaled-up version of one that Lady Rothermere had seen at Villa Farnese, Caprarola, Italy.

The new wings have made a huge difference: the house now fully feels as if it belongs in the landscape. At the same time as the wings went up, the herbaceous borders were taken out. This coincided with the departure of Mr Reese, who had given them so much of his attention. In their place is a very successful architectural evergreen scheme of Magnolia grandiflora and Wisteria sinensis trained against the balustrades, with, in front of them, box domes and a low edging of Lonicera pileata in-filled with soft mounds of Bupleurum fruticosum. Urns of white tulips sit on the stone piers and, from the top of the steps, one looks back to the yew cubes on the lawn that announce the parterre, which had to be replanted 10 years ago as the box was suffering blight.

There is a formal underpinning throughout the garden, providing year-round interest with hedges, parterres and topiary. The beech beehives look particularly good in the area that remains of the former east garden (reduced when the east wing was built), where they grow with standard white wisteria, tree peonies and roses.

Mr Golby has helped to curate an excellent selection of ornamental trees and shrubs. ‘A higher than average rainfall and the greensand overlying chalk soil are ideal conditions for magnolia, flowering dogwoods, most shrubs and trees and wildflower meadows,’ he explains, ‘albeit dangerously free-draining for young trees.’

Notable among these are the avenues of Pyrus nivalis — ‘a great tree that people don’t use enough,’ says Mr Golby — running along the top bank in the walled garden. Another moment of interest here is provided by the stand of white-flowering ornamental cherries underplanted with white crocus. These were bought as ‘Shirotae’ (which would have formed a ceiling of white), but turned out to be ‘Taihaku’ and might one day be replaced. Magnolias, viburnum, Staphylea pinnata and Cornus kousa are massed around the restored old pond — one of the few features that remain of the original garden. Recalling Ninfa, several mature trees here are run up with big roses such as R. ‘Princesse Marie’, a lovely light-pink double-flowered Hybrid Sempervirens introduced in France in 1829. (The roses at Ferne Park are some of the luckiest in the world, blanketed in a good 3in–4in of rich mulch, courtesy of the stables.)

In keeping with so many Italian gardens, there is theatre, a deliberate creation of individual scenes and special moments. I particularly like the decision to leave the boughs of the catalpas beside the changing rooms in the walled garden — inspired by Kent’s Praeneste at Rousham — to swoop to the ground in a great curtsey. The same gesture is echoed by the cherries and camassias.

Waiting in the wings to entertain the visitor are many of those reclamation-yard finds — a pair of stone obelisks announce the double lime avenues. In the potager in the kitchen garden, created from scratch by Mr Golby in what had been a wood yard, the bothy in the corner has octagonal glazed windows copied from Rousham. Outside stands a fine 1692 William and Mary lead tank embossed with the Tudor rose and Prince of Wales feathers.

Much care has gone into individual commissions. The intricate ironwork of the southgarden gate was made by Hughie Powell of Cotswold Decorative Ironworkers in Oxfordshire; the white gates at the entrance to the potager were by Nick Hodges from Wroxton, Oxfordshire, using antique tools. Every small detail is considered — and it is this attention that has created not only an intelligent and sophisticated arrangement of the areas around the house, but a garden that is used and lived in (including paths along which horses can be led from the stables to the park).

The north front of the house is a case in point. This is the formal entrance, so must deliver the grand gesture, yet it does this with much grace. Originally, there had been shrubs and climbing plants on the walls, but in a recent reworking these have been removed, leaving only two wisteria to clothe the railings of the entrance steps. The house is now bare, with architectural blocks of clipped yew formally arranged.

The yews are essential to setting up the scene from those steps, as the visitor looks back over the wide gravel area to the distant Vale of Wardour. They hold everything together: framing the view and, in the near foreground, below the terrace, is a formal pool from which rises the fountain of Triton. This is a copy of the statue that stood outside the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, one that Lady Rothermere and Mr Golby had long admired and itself a copy by Stephen Pettifer of the Bernini Fontana del Tritone in Rome. The genius finishing touch — which brings all back to Nature — was to sprinkle seeds of pale-yellow mulleins and sea holly in the gravel, the former from a packet sent by Debo Devonshire from Chatsworth; the latter, Eryngium ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’, a nod to the great British horticulturist.

The garden at Ferne Park is now well established, the result of a creative combination of workmanship by many people over 25 years, orchestrated by Lady Rothermere and Mr Golby and now gardened by Brendon Long and Ritchie Lever who, with their team, maintain everything to a refined standard.

‘After more than 25 years, a degree of maturity is settling across the estate,’ says Mr Golby. ‘Limes, beech, hornbeam, sweet chestnut and planes are reaching lofty specimens. The orchard produces a great abundance of fruit and climbing and rambling roses cascade from the canopy of semi-mature trees.

‘It is exciting,’ says Lady Rothermere, ‘to let a garden slightly run away and find its own uniqueness and its own soul, which I think it is busy doing. It’s like being on a horse that’s ever so slightly out of control.’ As for the birds, they are singing their pleasure throughout the garden and the park. ‘It’s a miracle how many swallows there are now.’

This feature originally appeared in the May 13, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

I love the Chelsea Flower Show and this year’s was a corker. I first went in 1974. It was free to members of the RHS (we were known as Fellows then) and I don’t remember any of the jostling crowds that people complain about now. Nor was it so micromanaged: journalists today are urged not to refer to the Chelsea Flower Show, but to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. I am happy to confirm, therefore, that it is micromanaged by the RHS and not by Chelsea F. C.

There are, indeed, many different Chelseas, which means that there is something for every-one. First, there are the gardens that get all the media attention. Their purpose is to promote their sponsors and to further the careers of their designers. Television programmers love them, but they offer little to real gardeners. Second, there are the innumerable stalls along the Eastern Avenue, whose relevance to gardening is sometimes hard to deduce, although almost all are manned by pleasant people selling beautiful things that you end up buying because you had not realised how much you needed them.

Then there are the plants, because it is in the Great Pavilion that you find the best of all possible Chelseas. I made a beeline for the new roses, especially ‘Sir David Beckham’ from David Austin. I recounted the story of its life, from seedling to commercial launch, in Country Life last year. It’s unusual among Austin roses — quite like a Floribunda, with a hint of the Hybrid Musks, although its incurved petals form the shape of a Champagne goblet and also reminded me of ‘Mme Pierre Oger’, a fine Bourbon rose from the 1870s. The flowers are scented, medium-sized, mother-of-pearl in colour, fading quickly to pure white and held in large clusters. The slender pedicels sometimes bend a bit sideways, which I think will make a fine effect in the garden, although it is hard to know how it will perform as a cut rose.

It will make a good modern substitute for ever-popular ‘Iceberg’, first introduced in 1958 and now rather too susceptible to blackspot in our damp, cool climate. If the new rose fares as well as I hope, Sir David may eventually find that he is remembered less as a skilful footballer, but more as a fragrant English rose.

‘Sir David Beckham’ was Austin’s only new rose at Chelsea and I rather miss the prolific days of the 1980s when David Austin had established his house style — strongly scented, repeat-flowering roses with an old-fashioned shape. His business was expanding fast and we filled our gardens with his wonderful introductions: nine were launched in 1982, 14 in 1983, and 12 in 1984. The company believes its roses are constantly improving, so I heartily wish it would introduce many more.

Harkness Roses introduced no fewer than five new roses at Chelsea (and one disturbingly pink garden gnome), including a fine twin-tone bush rose ‘Youth Without Limits’ in support of the charity that runs the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.

I will certainly buy its new ‘Special Granddaughter’, a splendid super-pink ground-cover rose with a vigour and sheer prettiness that show up the shortcomings of old favourites, such as ‘The Fairy’. Harkness also introduced two new Persica hybrids — Philip Harkness has been working with Rosa persica for many years and his father, Jack, pioneered Persica-breeding 50 years ago with double-flowered ‘Tigris’. Mr Harkness’s ‘Chelsea Sunset’ has really large, semi-double flowers with a thumping red splodge at the centre of the flower, an excellent follow-on from last year’s ‘Memories and Moments’. Both should make hearty garden plants.

Yet there is more to Chelsea than roses. The Flora of South Africa exhibit brought a spectacular display of native plants and all on a princely scale — fynbos proteas stacked up, row upon row, to a great height, contrasting with a little rock garden planted entirely with forms of Drakensberg rhodohypoxis. I gasped at its boldness and brilliance, certain that it was the most inspired and inspiring exhibit in the show. The judges agreed.

Burncoose Nurseries can be relied on for excellent unusual plants: I greatly admired its new pink Cornus kousa ‘Scarlet Fire’ and covet its rare Debregeasia edulis ‘Elite’. Also impressive were cosmos from National Collection holder Jonathan Sheppard in Lincolnshire, clivias from Hoyland in Yorkshire and Anemone coronaria forms from Little Cornish Glasshouse.

Kevock Garden Plants, the Edinburgh nursery that trains and employs disabled persons, had a thoughtful design of spring-flowering herbaceous plants. Raymond Evison brought three splendid new clematis cultivars from Guernsey: ‘Queen’s Nurse’, ‘Eliza’ and ‘Ithemba’. His 50 years of devoted hybridising have transformed the way we grow clematis.

Finally, Blue Diamond’s massive exhibit showed the new Hydrangea paniculata cultivar Groundbreaker Ruby, whose flowers turn from white to crimson. It’s a good plant, but which novelty plant was best of all? The judges plumped for a purple-leaved hosta called ‘Red Ninja’, but I fell for a runner-up, Hydrangea ‘Velvet Night Red Lace’, with dark-red leaves, almost black, that set off the rich pink lace-cap flowers. Soon, I hope, we shall all be growing it.

Charles Quest-Ritson edited the RHS Encyclopedia of Roses. His book Climbing Roses of the World (2003) describes more than 1,600 climbers and ramblers.

Seventy-five years ago, London was enjoying a celebratory summer. The dreary, bombed-out South Bank had been transformed into a gleaming display of colour and national innovation as the centrepiece of the 1951 Festival of Britain. Optimistic architecture and design reflected British resilience back to its people with a decided sense of hope about the future. On top of that, there was Battersea, a spirited homage to the city’s lost pleasure gardens where festivalgoers could suspend their disbelief and enjoy an atmosphere of fun.

Every day, boats ferried passengers three miles upriver between the two sites, resulting in upwards of eight million visits made to Battersea Pleasure Gardens that year. Country Life’s Christopher Hussey was full of praise, describing the gardens as ‘light-hearted, gay, charming and imaginative, without a lapse (that I could see) into the tawdry or merely funny, and with little that one can criticise as dull’. This was quite the result considering early opposition, political stalling and funding problems. Organisers had had only 15 months to turn 37 acres of parkland, most recently used as wartime Dig For Victory allotments, into a family-friendly dreamscape. The weather conspired against them, too; the first five months of 1951 were the wettest since 1815. A blizzard on January 1 was followed by a thaw, then rain. The park, which had been reclaimed from the riverbed, seemed to be slipping back into the Thames as the water level rose and bulldozers were half submerged in the mud.

It was all rather different to the picture festival director Sir Gerald Barry had been nurturing in his mind of old Vauxhall Gardens, where Georgian men and women strolled in their finery among tree-lined avenues, dotted with music pavilions, taverns and theatrical entertainments. James Gardner, the chief designer charged with urgently realising this leisurely vision, called it ‘the experience of a lifetime’. In 1949, he had travelled to Denmark in search of inspiration, soaking up the lessons of Copenhagen’s much-loved Tivoli Gardens, which had opened a century earlier just as its London predecessors at Vauxhall (present-day SE11) and Ranelagh (SW3) both neared their end.

Gardner chose not to rely on pastiche, but also agreed with Barry that too much modern abstract design would be off-putting to ordinary visitors. His ideas were eclectic. A toadstool maze was rejected, as was the avenue of revolving flowerbeds, but he got the go-ahead for a pneumatic giant, a mouse village, Punch and Judy theatre and a clock that would go ‘mechanically mad’ on the hour.

In his memoirs, Gardner recalled designing a kiosk a night to stay on schedule. Nonetheless, half his spending had to go on the infrastructure of ‘pumps, piers, paving and planting’. Unlike on the South Bank, commercial sponsorship was allowed to make up the shortfall, but manufacturing fun on a tight budget was hard work. The job required a lot of lateral thinking and the sort of novel construction techniques learnt during the war.

A central feature of the gardens was the dance pavilion, which looked like a circus big top with its red and yellow stripes, except that it rose to a much higher point and had glazed screens around its perimeter. At the time, it was the biggest single-pole tent the world had ever seen; the fabric covering it weighed 15 tons. From inside came the big-band sounds of the era, with dancers at London’s newest ballroom assured of non-stop enjoyment eight hours a day, six days a week from May to November.

When visitors had danced up a thirst there were plenty of options, including a tea shop, two snack bars, three pubs, a wine garden and six restaurants. Delays meant the Pleasure Gardens opened three weeks after the main Festival of Britain exhibition, but The Daily Herald kept its readers abreast of the treats in store for them. According to a list published on May 8, these would include old favourites, such as seafood and jellied eels, alongside the new American import of hamburgers. For the sweet of tooth there were doughnuts, waffles and ice cream, all sure to tempt a population still subject to sugar rationing.

For the duration of their visit, the brains behind Battersea wanted people to forget their daily privations and inhabit a colourful world of plenty. Along the edge of the Crescent Restaurant that enclosed the western end of the pleasure gardens, the architect Patrick Gwynne designed a series of bow-fronted balconies, their roofs decorated with rope in sinuous patterns that looked like icing piped onto the plump peaks of fancy cakes.

The restaurant itself was another ingenious tent structure that used external suspension cables to make the roof float above diners. Next to it was a booth where tumblers performed throughout the day. This eccentric mix was key to the Battersea charm and at the Riverside Theatre, Gardner commissioned another of his ‘unorthodox artists’ to create a space for Victorian music hall, revues and puppet shows. Guy Sheppard, who had made his name designing sets for the Ballet Rambert, produced a 450-seat auditorium out of tubular steel scaffolding and fibrous plaster panels, which could theoretically be dismantled and re-erected at the end of the Festival, but sadly never was.

The outside of this pretty Regency-style building was painted pale blue, a detail we know thanks to the very rare collection of colour slides taken by Waldo Lanchester, whose Lanchester Marionettes proved a popular draw at the Riverside Theatre. Lanchester’s images, now in the South Bank Centre Archive, make the Pleasure Gardens real in a way that black and white stills simply cannot.

They also describe a very different context to the Battersea we know today. In one view, looking across the lawn, a tall gasholder looms behind the multi-domed Garden Buffet and three towers of the not-yet complete Battersea Power Station rise up in the distance. This was still a London landscape of dingy streets, wharves and railway goods yards, which made the playfulness of the temporary architecture, set amid the bright floral scheme of master plantsman Russell Page, all the more striking.

The focal point of the garden’s plan was the Grand Vista, a collaboration between artist John Piper and cartoonist Osbert Lancaster in which they contrived to spectacularly blend follies, arcades and pavilions around canal-like sheets of water and fountains that were illuminated at night. During the twice-weekly firework displays, magical reflections shimmered across the surface of these pools. Hussey described the life-size figures modelled in wickerwork that topped the round end pavilions, as ‘looking like sketches by Henry Moore’. This sense of two-dimensional art being brought to life was most compellingly achieved in the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway based on the Punch cartoons of Rowland Emett. Three quixotic engines named Nellie, Neptune and Wild Goose ran along 500 yards of track into gently absurdist stations; it was so popular that the miniature railway made back its costs within three weeks.

Another must-see attraction was the Guinness Clock. Graphic designers Jan Lewitt and George Him filled their 25ft high structure with a menagerie of animals from well-known Guinness advertising campaigns that sprang into manic motion thanks to multiple and elaborate mechanisms hidden inside. Yet more delights awaited in the six-acre funfair complete with the latest American thrill rides. Shops lined the Parade, there was a children’s zoo, an amphitheatre for family shows, a boating lake with ‘Cornish harbour scenery’ and a tree walk where visitors met dragons among the canopy of leaves. Country Life called it all ‘an unqualified success’.

The London correspondent for the West Sussex Gazette reported that, at Battersea Pleasure Gardens, ‘one is reminded of Alice in Wonderland, eastern fairy tales, and the Regency splendours of Brighton Royal Pavilion — all at once, and getting on quite joyously’. It was an ideal and much-appreciated complement to the more serious South Bank. Beloved of Londoners, the festival gardens long outlived their better-known counterpart, but deteriorated over time until there was little left.

In 2011, Wandsworth Council, with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, restored some of the main landscape features and introduced new elements referencing those from 60 years earlier. In this anniversary year, it’s a lovely place to while away some time — but oh, how I wish I’d been there in 1951.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on May 6, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

You can see ginkgos, araucarias and wollemias in many English gardens, but what do they have in common, apart from difficult names? The answer is that they are all living fossils — truly ancient conifer species that ruled our planet long before flowering plants evolved. They existed before most of our insects, too — which is just as well, because they are pollinated only by the wind. Like all conifers, mature trees release vast quantities of pollen for gusts of wind to carry away in search of a grateful reception by other trees. What's more, ginkgos and araucarias are either male or female — a rare phenomenon in the tree kingdom. So some trees release the pollen and others say thank you for it. Wollemia, however, has the best of both sexes, because it produces both male and female cones.

The amazing thing about fossil trees is that they have survived so long. Most of their relatives in the group that botanists call the Gymnospermae were squeezed out by climate change and the rise of flowering trees, the so-called Angiosperms. But these fossil trees are tough; some ginkgos even survived the atom bomb that fell on Hiroshima. And now it is widely planted as a street tree, because it is disease-free and utterly imperturbable in the face of air pollution, quite apart from its pretty leaves and amazing autumn colour.

Triassic fossils prove that ginkgos date back about 250 million years. Nevertheless, they no longer exist in the wild, but owe their survival entirely to human intervention. Individual trees live for 1,000 years — some are reputed to be 4,000 years old — and they were widely planted in Taoist temples in Ancient China, as symbols of immortality, rather like yew trees in our own churchyards.

Why then have they died out in the wild? The usefulness of their wood is one explanation — humans destroy diversity. And there is another reason, which is that gingkos ignored the maxim 'diversify or die'. The usual aftermath of a catastrophic event such as sudden climate change or an asteroid impact is to speed up evolution. Ginkgos should have evolved and developed new forms and species that could cope with change, but they didn't. Or perhaps they did, because it may be that Ginkgo biloba is the last survivor precisely because it was able to evolve constantly.

However, the trees that were preserved in Chinese temples are all identical, with little or no variation among them. And since they were first taken into cultivation in Europe in the 18th century, a host of new variations have turned up. No one knows why. There are more than 320 different cultivars in our National Collection in Worcestershire. Curious ginkgophiles should contact Plant Heritage to know more.

Ginkgos hold one more mystery. Their fruits have a disgusting smell of putrefaction, which combines all the most revolting odours you can think of. And they are thought to be carcinogenic. Then why are the nuts a valued food ingredient in several East Asian countries? Because they taste delicious.

Araucarias are the monkey-puzzle trees and just as prehistoric as ginkgos, dating back at least 175 million years, but they have diversified over the millennia so that there are still 20 species in the wild. Fourteen are unique to just one island, New Caledonia, famous as one of the world's diversity hotspots. Some botanists think that the proliferation of monkey-puzzle species, all on one tropical island smaller in area than Wales, could only be the result of a burst of radiation about 5 million years ago, but they are at a loss to explain how this might have occurred.

Best known to us, of course, is the original monkey puzzle Araucaria araucana from Chile, first introduced to England in 1795 by a botanist called Archibald Menzies, who travelled round the world with the explorer ship HMS Discovery. When the Spanish governor of Chile, an Irishman with the glorious name of Ambrosio Bernardo O'Higgins y O'Higgins, invited the ship's officers to dine with him, they were served a dish of large nuts for dessert. Menzies slipped a handful into his pocket, germinated them on the voyage home and presented five saplings to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The seeds of a monkey puzzle are not notably large — about the size of an almond — but the cone that carries them has more than 200 seeds and drops heavily off the tree when it is ripe. The largest of all monkey puzzle cones belongs to the bunya pine, Araucaria bidwellii from Queensland in Australia. It has the size and shape of a rugby ball or a large pineapple, weighs up to 20lbs and may fall from a height of 70ft. Best avoided.

There was great excitement in the 1940s when Chinese botanists discovered a prehistoric tree that was known to palaeobotanists as Metasequoia glyptostroboides. Palaeobotanists are students of extinct plants that existed millions of years ago — they hope, by working with fossils, to develop a better understanding of evolution.

The popular name for metasequoias is dawn redwood because they resemble the redwoods of California, but pre-date their evolution. In 1947, American botanists financed an expedition to collect metasequoia seed, which was shared between Chinese, American and European botanic gardens, including Kew and Edinburgh. Metasequoia glyptostroboides has proved very amenable to cultivation and is now available from garden centres all over the world. The city of Pizhou in the Chinese province of Jiangsu has planted 5 million metasequoias as street trees, including the longest avenue in the world — nearly 30 miles, thickly lined with metasequoias on both sides.

The wollemia pine — Wollemia nobilis — is the latest fossil tree to have been discovered, as recently as 1994. It exists as just one wild population of about 80 trees in a ravine less than 100 miles north-west of Sydney, Australia. Actually, no wollemia fossils have ever been found, but they are thought to have evolved about the same time as the monkey puzzles.

Like all fossil trees, however, wollemias have proved easy to grow in a great number of climates and soils all over the world. It seems that fossil trees are great survivors so that, once discovered and cosseted in cultivation, they fare very well. It has no close relations — there is only one species of wollemia — so how did it survive so long, and in just one very small area? No-one knows. Forty million years ago, Australia was warm, humid and thickly forested. Now, by contrast, it is hot, dry and slowly turning into a desert — but wollemia has adapted to the change. And, over the last million years or so, Australia has on several occasions suffered extensive glaciation, just as we did during the European ice ages. But wollemia has survived and now you see it as an ornamental tree in a wide range of climates all over the world.

One of the big changes in the world's flora followed from the evolution of flowering plants. The earliest flowering trees to evolve — the ancestors of magnolias — date back nearly 100 million years and could not rely on wind to disperse their pollen. Some other creature, usually an insect, had to be drawn to their flowers and transfer the pollen to another so that seeds could be set. Bees did not evolve until about 50 million years ago — their ancestors were predatory wasps who hunted other insects, whereas bees feed on nectar and pollen and have pollen baskets on their legs to carry supplies back to their young.

How then were magnolias and other flowering plants pollinated before bees evolved? The answer is that beetles are attracted to the protein-rich pollen and spread it from tree to tree. They still do so today. Bees do not bother with magnolias, but the flowers continue to attract beetles. Magnolias have large, thick petals (known as tepals) that are strong enough to stand up to large insects. And sometimes they close their flowers to trap the beetles inside for a fruitful overnight experience of pollen-shedding.

Many species of water lilies — another prehistoric plant — also seek beetles to pollinate them, drawing them deep into sweet, sticky nectar to relieve them of the pollen they carry. They, too, close their flowers at night and, once fertilised, plunge their flowers beneath the surface of the water, whether or not the insects have been able to escape. Other plants are pollinated by bats, and even lizards. And the common harvest mouse, searching for pollen and nectar, will climb into tulip flowers, gorge itself and fall asleep inside after feeding.

These ancient trees — some of the oldest plants in the world — survived so much climate change, as well as catastrophes such as the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs (as well as three quarters of all living species) 69 million years ago, because they produce a very large number of seeds. Plus, mass extinctions are surprisingly good for evolution. And, despite everything you read about mankind's destruction of the natural world, it is quite possible that further fossil trees remain to be discovered somewhere in almost every corner of the world.

At the check-out of most garden centres in France and Italy, alongside the chocolate bars and cheap trinkets, are piles of almanacs. These are not the almanacs we are familiar with in Britain that claim to predict the winner of the Grand National or offer relationship advice based on your astrological sign. The almanacs that French and Italian gardeners buy give a detailed schedule of the phases of the moon each day of the year, with advice on the work to do that day in the garden.

In many parts of Europe, gardening is guided by the lunar cycle. Often called moon gardening or lunar gardening, it is a traditional practice followed by generations of gardeners. Here in Britain, it has usually been seen as a preserve of eccentrics. Recently, however, a new generation of our gardeners, many seeking a stronger link to the natural world, has become interested in moon gardening.

The principle belief of the system is that the moon’s gravitational pull affects all water on Earth, not only tides, but also the water within the soil and the sap in plants and that the changing strength in moonlight affects plant growth.

The practice can be broken down to a simple rule of thumb: a waxing moon, when energy and sap are rising, is the time to sow, transplant and take cuttings of leafy and fruiting plants that grow above the ground; whereas a waning moon, when the sap is low, favours root crops, bulb planting and pruning. The period between the last quarter of a moon through to a new moon is considered to be a dormant period when no planting or sowing should happen. This is, however, a propitious time for pruning and for harvesting crops such as potatoes, apples and squash that will be stored through the winter. Within these broad principles, there are specific days when particular tasks are either proscribed or encouraged.

A lot of my vegetable-gardening know-how was acquired from a French neighbour, whose beautifully planted and astonishingly productive potager I tried to emulate. Whenever Madame Boyer sowed, transplanted, pruned or harvested, so, more or less, did I. All her life (she continued to garden until the age of 99), her work was guided by the cycles of the moon. She had no need to follow an almanac, but observed the state of the moon and understood, from knowledge learned from her parents and grandparents.

Like, I suspect, most gardeners, I am far too busy (and ill disciplined) to follow such a rigid timetable. Jobs get done when I have the time and when the weather is clement, which may explain why my vegetable garden was never, nor ever will be, as magnificent as Boyer’s. Each year, we both cut hazel wands ready for the job of supporting beans and staking dahlias. One spring, hers were stout and strong, mine were weak and fragile. Her explanation was that I had cut the hazel at the wrong time: do it when the moon is low and there will be no sap in the poles to attract insects that will munch through the wood. I do not know if that is the explanation for the failure, but, ever since, I check the moon before coppicing hazel that I want to use in the garden. Just in case.

Science has not been kind to this practice and there is no robust, repeatable study or body of evidence proving that following the rules of lunar planting reliably changes yield, taste or plant health. The moon does, of course, influence large bodies of water, but, researchers argue, those forces are too weak at the scale of soil moisture and plant cells to explain the claimed gardening outcomes in a consistent, reproducible way.

Trying to calculate the material advantages of moon gardening is perhaps, however, missing the point. For many gardeners who garden following the cycles of the moon, the benefits are not measurable in increased yields or sturdier plants. Feeling part of a centuries-old gardening tradition that provides a rhythm to the year and requires careful observation of the world around is, in itself, rewarding. Even the most sceptical of us can appreciate that, in an increasingly alienating world, anything that helps us appreciate the joys of the changing seasons and the pleasures of the natural world is welcome.

This feature originally appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When applying for planning permission for more solar panels here last year, the eco-adviser commented that my suggestion of a native hedgerow screen around them would not especially up the ‘biodiversity net gain’ because we would be keeping it at about my height (5ft 7in).

I was not sure I followed the logic: stock-proof hedges, after all, are kept at about this height and are famously biodiverse and mine would be wild and willowy. My interest was piqued enough, however, to sleuth some labour-saving alternatives that would form a magnetic ribbon of pollinator lures and a nesting heaven, yet never cast a shadow on one precious iota of sun-given power.

A solar array is expensive and expansive, but, luckily, we have a small square field we can use. Formerly littered with modern agricultural buildings, it has been cleared and compacted into a hard wasteland, rubble-ridden acres that have developed their own eco-system of poor grass, grasshoppers and voles. We have been ‘rounding’ them at the edges with hedgerow and copse planting, but more would be needed.

My thoughts turned to quick-growing annuals — good for birds. Perhaps I should go for game crop, that mixture of sunflowers, millet, quinoa, niger seed — exotically named Guizotia abyssinica — oats and teasel (a very west London menu), which you see in pheasant country. Mr B stipulated ‘no maize’, to avoid an onslaught of rats, badgers and deer, but I have always been rather fascinated by game crops. The planting of woods and copses with a shrubby understorey created the pentimento of woods and fields we know and love. Game and hunting have had a huge hand in what we think of as ‘wild’ countryside, with cover varied in height and density, as opposed to monumental monotonous agri-farming. Yet annuals would require too much work and the look would be too outlandish and incongruous here in the wet Cheddar lands.

Quick-growing perennials were my next thought. Miscanthus sinensis, for instance, which is tolerant of many hard conditions and great for wildlife to nest and hide in, offering perennial cover. Willows and cornus for coppicing would suck up any standing water, but this look was too managed and hard work.

We turned back to the hedgerow idea and searched for different ingredients for low-level, wildlife-friendly, fruitful strips of semi-permaculture. Hedgy things woven together with fruit-bearing Rosaceae; brambles, berries, dog-like roses and perhaps some damsons and quinces, bramleys even; an edible hedgible. The body of this would need to be shrubby multi-stems — perhaps a slow-growing holly, such as Ilex aquifolium ‘J.C. van Tol’. Common lilac in hedgerows gets too tall, but the Persian lilac is much smaller. Syringa meyeri ‘Palibin’, S. pubescens subsp. microphylla ‘Superba’ and S. x josiflexa ‘Bellicent’, for example.

Then species roses in abundance, adding thorniness and hips for the birds, from the apple-scented eglantine Rosa rubiginosa to Ayrshire roses, even the odd cultivar such as repeat-flowering Friendship of Strangers and the aptly named low-level Grouse. The adorable, scented, yellow currant ‘Gwen’s Buffalo’ would stay the right size. I could add currants (‘Rovada’ and ‘White Versailles’, royal and ancient) plus the recommended robust blackcurrants ‘Ben Connan’, ‘Ben Hope’ and ’Ben Sarek’, all bred for disease resistance, compact habit and heavy cropping with minimal intervention. Gooseberries, which I love to make into the simplest of fools, make brilliant nesting cover — Ribes uvacrispa ‘Invicta’ is all it purports to be.

For weaving and binding this basket, I would add honeysuckle — straight Lonicera periclymenum — on the shady side (with the currants, which sulk in the sun) and Rubus, the bramble family, too, from the enchanting white-flowered R. ‘Benenden’ to blackberry ‘Black Butte’ and the Japanese wineberry, R. phoenicolasius. The Japanese thought led me back to quinces — white-flowered ‘Jet Trail’, the perfect addition to the apple and blackberry pie. The very idea of wild raspberries means the likes of ‘Autumn Bliss’ and ‘Glen Ample’ must go into the mix, again on the shady side. Many of these are better cooked and excellent for sauces and souffles.

The hedge was becoming a Queen of Puddings, a veritable pie, which could have its uses in all sorts of places — not only the solar screen. Yet the adage about too many cooks is true, too, of ingredients and I will need to edit mine: nobody wants their screening to look like an abandoned municipal car park. As ever, the rule is simplicity — to choose species ideally and reduce the number of varieties; boldness in everything.

Gently flowing water invigorated more show gardens than usual this year at Chelsea, from the slenderest of rills to shallow, stepped pools, the prevailing mood being calm and tranquil.

Also noticeable in the gardens were exceptionally varied trees. They ranged from substantial hawthorns in full blossom to ancient, espaliered pears and potted Persian ironwoods. There were pines in unusual abundance, size and form, convincingly despondent ‘weeping cedars’ and the contrastingly cheerful acers of Japan, in their coats of many colours.

The ‘woodland edge’ maintains its might in 2026. I did think we had reached ‘peak woodland’ a couple of years ago, but apparently not. Romantic, pretty and fashionably wild, intentionally sylvan designs took away top awards for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Tate Britain and the Woodland Trust.

Meanwhile, in the Great Pavilion, luscious leaves had their moment: The Sienna Hosta nursery received the coveted President’s Choice award and the unique new Hosta ‘Red Ninja’, its foliage streaked with burgundy, was anointed the Plant of the Year.

The Tate Britain Garden

Gold Medal

A forest of art: Barbara Hepworth’s bronze Bicentric Form (1949) sits amid Tom Stuart-Smith’s Chelsea scaled-down sample of the Clore Garden for Tate Britain, due to open in 2027 on its 1½-acre site at Millbank. Its bold, naturalistic planting includes herbaceous euphorbias, the tractor-seat plant Ligularia reniformis, sago palms, Cycas revoluta and sparkles of white Libertia grandiflora. Slender water rills cut through the paving.

Tokonama Garden–Sanumaya No Niwa

Silver-gilt Medal

Last year’s Best in Show winner Kazayuki Ishihara presented yet another masterpiece. The popular Japanese designer’s trademark landscapes of hefty rocks, mosses, tumbling waters, acers in varied hues and characterful, crumpled pines have earned a loyal following — and has ‘gravel gardening’ ever been as perfectly presented? I thought a silver-gilt was a little harsh, it seemed to me to be his best yet.

The Curious Garden

Presented by Frances Tophill for the RHS and The King’s Foundation, this pleasant muddle of flowers and edibles was planted around an oak building containing produce gleaned from the garden, including dyes, jams and dried herbs. As the media fixated on its several garden gnomes, gardeners were more interested in the crimson-flowered broad beans, planted for their beautiful blooms among Rosa ‘The King’s Rose’.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: On the Edge

Gold Medal, Garden of the Year

Seemingly plucked from the countryside and brought to the show by Sarah Eberle, the garden was planted with exquisite detail in its natural flora, associated with the woodland edge. Deftly presented with soft, earthen paths, its genius moment lay in the prostrate, timber form of a gigantic, sleeping ‘Gaia’, or Mother Nature, made by a chainsaw artist, the appropriately named Chris Wood.

Addelshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City

Gold Medal

Boulder dash: attention to detail in its attractive, gurgling water features and careful planting aimed at water conservation produced a unified concept by Joe and Laura Carey. Visitors appreciated its ‘user friendliness’ as a potential mild-climate, small city garden in which it would be delightful to relax or potter. Planting included poppies, verbascums, cistuses, salvias, irises and woolly leaved Ballota pseudodictamnus.

The Eden Project: Bring Me Sunshine Garden

Silver-gilt Medal

This interesting, complex garden, by Harry Holding and Alex Michaelis, was a crowd pleaser. Its central terrace and canopy are part of the permanent structure due to be relocated to a new Eden Project, at Morecambe Bay in Lancashire. The structure looks quite space age, but is modelled on the form of a bivalve sea shell. Luminous yellow Baptisia ‘Lemon Meringue’ brought sunshine in all weathers.

Flood Re: Contain the Rain Garden

Gold Medal and Best Container Garden

Drawing upon ancient Persian design, this was the most glamorous container garden I have seen at Chelsea since the category was launched some years ago. Within a tiny space, John Howlett captured the ambience of a private courtyard at an elegant Mediterranean villa or high-end hotel. Its secret was the gathering of contrasting foliages in interlocking, large containers, set off by the drama of tall, Parrotia persica trees. The copper/verdigris finishes and contrasting pale limestone and render brought calmness and unity to the bold ensemble.

The Killik & Co ‘A Seed in Time’ Garden

Gold Medal

‘Save for a rainy day’ was the subtitle for this cleverly organised garden by Baz Grainger, using its imposing, rectangular structures to gather rain and redirect it to a central wetland area, crossed through with stepping stones. Intended for family enjoyment, its planting was engagingly mixed, with fruiting trees such as big, old, espaliered pears and self-sowing flowers, such as foxgloves and primulas. The prettiness of the planting and lush greenery nicely counterpointed the hard, modern lines of the structures.

Trussell’s Together Garden

Gold Medal

Under a Constable sky and overlooked by the roof dormers and soaring chimney stacks of the Royal Hospital, this garden was laden with declared messages about ‘togetherness’, ‘connection’ and ‘communities holding each other up’ related to the ambitions of its sponsor. That is all well and good, but does it succeed also as a garden? Happily, this one did and it drew the visitor to peruse its central area of sociable seating, contained within an inventive and striking timber structure, all of which contributed to Rob Hardy receiving the Best Construction Award.

This feature originally appeared in the May 27, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Ninety-nine years ago, Country Life’s final edition of 1927 contained an article, with photographs by renowned photographer Geoffrey Roland Ballance, on the Palace and Gardens of the Prince of Monaco.

Ballance was born in London’s heavily-polluted Hackney, in 1874, and caught tuberculosis, the debilitating lung infection, in his early twenties. He moved to St Moritz, Switzerland, to convalesce in the clear, mountain air. There, the keen outdoorsman took up the fairly-new, patience-requiring art form of photography, and went about mastering the expensive, but ethereal platinum print process.

Country Life commissioned Ballance on numerous occasions and shared his beautifully composed and exposed photographic views of European architecture, flora and fauna to readers in the UK.

Ballance's Monaco work was no exception, and, granted permission to photograph inside the palace by Louis II, Prince of Monaco (who, incidentally, was the prince who oversaw the inaugural Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix in 1929), it was the cornerstone of this magazine’s Houses & Gardens of the Riviera collection.

For this collection, Ballance photographed the Palace of Monaco, its State Apartments, gardens and breathtaking, panoramic views. He later returned to the Principality in 1929 to capture the Prince’s astonishing and extensive succulent collection, nestled high above the rock-clinging palace.

Ballance died young, aged just 60, but some of the beautiful work he left behind lives on in the Country Life Archive — a selection of which we've reproduced below.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here.

Get 51 issues of Country Life for £150 and save more than 40% with our best offer ever — exclusive to the Chelsea Flower Show.

Receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV (RRP £39) when you subscribe at the stand (PW215, until May 23, offer available to the first 200 UK subscribers).

Who knew you could pop a plant in a sealed bottle and it would live — nay, thrive? The Victorians did, apparently. And now so do hipsters everywhere. If you’re not yet aboard the terrarium craze, then let me catch you up. It is basically a self-sustaining ecosystem whereby plants in glass containers generate moisture in sunlight, which condenses onto the glass and thus allows the plants to water themselves. If you’ve ever wanted a plant, but stopped yourself because you knew you’d forget to water it, this is for you.

The first known terrarium was created by the London-based botanist and doctor Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in 1829 after he had placed a chrysalis of a sphinx moth in damp soil in a bottle, for observation. After he sealed it, however, he forgot about it, as one often does with moths in bottles. After a week, fern and grass seedlings had sprouted, which got him to thinking.

The trend became popular in the Victorian era, particularly when it came to transporting exotic plants on boats from overseas — which led to a boom in agricultural industries worldwide. In 1834, a man called George Loddiges was in charge of the first live introduction to the UK of Gleichenia microphylla (the very delicate coral fern). It came from Australia, all the way to east London and was the first plant to be shipped here in a Wardian case — they were then known by this egotistical moniker, not as a terrariums. Loddiges estimated that before this he would lose 19 out of every 20 plants he imported during a sea voyage, compared to 19 out of 20 surviving when using a Wardian case.

An amateur botanist, Allan Alexander Maconochie, is said to have invented something similar a decade prior, but never published his findings, so Ward got the credit. As they say: you snooze, you lose. Ward’s 1842 book Of the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases and the display of his cases at the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations took his discovery global.

The upper classes in Britain and Kew Gardens were particular fans of the invention as terrariums protected plants from the city’s pollution (the result of so much coal burning, courtesy of the industrial revolution). So too were a slightly less kosher (read: incredibly evil) group, the European colonisers of Africa, who used the method to bring goods like spices and coffee to Europe.

Until that point Africa had been vastly unexplored due to the risk of malaria, but with terrariums the cure quinine — which came from the Cinchona trees native to South America — could be brought over to Europe to essentially immunise travellers. Without this, the historian Daniel R Headrick argues in The Tools of Empire: ‘European colonialism would have been almost impossible in Africa, and much costlier elsewhere in the tropics.’ Thus, a dark side of the terrarium came to be. The colonisers drank the quinine ‘tonic’ with gin, creating the gin and tonic, just to add insult to injury. In happier news, the banana from which the seedless Cavendish banana was developed was carried to Chatsworth, also in a Wardian case, so at least it wasn’t all bad.

Terrariums today are great ways to keep plants indoors while hurting no one. Open terrariums, as opposed to closed ones, also exist. Moss and ferns are usually kept in closed terrariums, which replicate their native tropical environment. Open terrariums are better suited to plants that prefer less humidity. I made one using an old rum bottle (very pirate-esque) but you can use any kind of container with clear glass walls.

Terrariums like bright but indirect sunlight and small-leaved ferns and moss thrive inside them. Making one is a fiddly process, but very rewarding (perhaps don’t drink some of the rum first, like I did). Best start with a drainage layer of small rocks or gravel, then add compost and your plants. A small pokey device is handy – perhaps a chopstick or other long thin item. Finish with a few sprays of water and enjoy for life. The experts at London Terrariums have some more detailed tips for the terrarium virgin. (The key, they say, is keeping things moist.)

Lotte made her terrarium at a masterclass run by London Terrariums at Rhum Tavern in London in partnership with Kraken Rum. The masterclasses will take place throughout the rest of the year with tickets priced at £55 per person. Click here to find out more.

From the moment the gates opened at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, at 7am on Monday, the London borough has felt like the centre of the universe — or, at least, Country Life's universe.

At our stand, the 'Garden Lover's Library' — beautifully designed by George Saumarez Smith of ADAM Architecture — the reception has been nothing short of extraordinary, from both visitors in person and admirers on social media.

It has been a vintage year, with appearances from four Country Life guest editors, The King, The Queen, Sir David Beckham, The Princess Royal, and one very longstanding and popular columnist, Alan Titchmarsh.

Members of our team will be on the stand until the very end so please do come and say hello if you can. Alternatively, you can read about what happened, as it happened, on the Monday and Tuesday, here and here.

Take advantage of our best subscription offer ever

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, until May 23.

If you visit the stand, you can buy a year-long subscription to Country Life for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price — our best offer ever. There are also international offers available.

But wait! There's more!

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life (that's us) as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Here at Country Life, we love the Chelsea Flower Show — and we know you do too. So we're absolutely delighted to bring you this very special edition of the Country Life Podcast, recorded live in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, with Clive Nichols and Kathryn Bradley-Hole.

Kathryn was Country Life's gardens editor for 18 years until moving on to concentrate on writing, and has a lifetime of experience in the horticultural world — and it's also the 40th anniversary of her first trip to the Chelsea Flower Show.

Coincidentally, Clive has also been coming to SW3 for exactly 40 years. The man dubbed 'the king of garden photography' is a regular contributor to Country Life, and we're thrilled that he's not only taken all our pictures from the show this year, but also appeared on this episode of the Country Life Podcast.

Kathryn and Clive talk about their favourite bits of the Chelsea Flower Show, the gardens they'd most like to have back at their own homes, why the King's garden wasn't given a fair crack at having the impact it should have done, and what they'd do themselves if they were designing their own showpiece at SW3.

Episode credits

Host and editor: Toby Keel

Guests: Kathryn Bradley-Hole and Clive Nichols

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Back next time: James Fisher

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Subscribe to the Country Life Podcast

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When Vita Sackville West said ‘a flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it’, I imagine she would surely include potted plants in her edict. If you enjoy plants outdoors, there is nothing more natural than wanting to bring them inside. A well-tended plant can light up a neglected corner, grace a dining table in place of an arrangement, bring either a sense of formality or ease to a room, or splash of colour or a strong punctuation of form; and science says they can even make you feel better. There is nothing else that adds a spark of vitality to an otherwise static interior quite like, well, something unmistakably alive.

For Jane Kennerley, who has created the planting scheme for Country Life’s A Garden Lover's Library stand at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the lure of indoor plants is not simply a matter of aesthetic enjoyment, but a nostalgic nod to the houseplants of her childhood and those that tended them. The library, designed by George Saumarez Smith of ADAM Architecture, is a graceful connector between outdoors and in; botanical art and his own curation of beloved gardening tomes fill the walls making it a place of solace for anyone who loves both books and borders.

It is Jane’s interior planting, though, which blurs the boundaries of garden and room most of all. It is full of her old-fashioned favourites, all of which were popular before the current fad for splashy variegated tropicals took over. Pelargoniums, especially the scented classics such as velvety tomentosum and Attar of Roses, are almost impossible to walk past and not touch in order to get a whiff of their scent. Citrus and rose trees, in terracotta pots, add structural weight and symmetry to the room. Charmingly dowdy stalwarts, including spider plants and aspidistra, are comforting in the homeliest of ways. For Jane, these plants speak to her memories of family and friends more so than other fashionable choices; anyone who loves plants can likely relate. It’s these humble, ubiquitous houseplants that were often a part of the daily rhythm and fabric of our homes as children — and on which we practised our green-fingered skills. A particularly doted upon Christmas cactus or a jade plant from an aunt? A grandfather’s collection of amaryllis or granny’s geraniums on the windowsill…

This instinct to bring the garden inside is nothing new; evidence is written across human history, from the potted palms of the Ancient Egyptians to the ferns and orchids of the Victorians. Historically, scented and flowering plants were brought inside for enjoyment, but also to mask bad odours. More recently, they’ve been used to boost wellbeing, with science showing that they reduce stress, improve mood and increase focus and productivity. The health benefits aren’t only physiological, as plants have been shown to improve air quality by removing toxins and adding oxygen to their surroundings (though experts suggest you would need a veritable indoor jungle to have a marked improvement). Sounds like a good idea to us.

Houseplants generally fall into two categories: year-round indoor plants — the tropical ones which require bright, diffused light and have specialised watering requirements — and the garden varieties — which can happily jump from indoors to out and back again as the season demands (think pelargoniums and amaryllis). Both categories have their place and lend a different feeling to indoor spaces when seen through a decorative lens. A well-chosen pot is key. Aged, mossy terracotta suggests ease and earthiness, a ‘just-in-from-the-garden’ temporality; while antique porcelain, such as the Chinese blue and white pots chosen by Jane, make whatever they hold feel polished and elegant. Handmade studio pottery can be especially apt for tropicals, leaning into their groovy, graphic nature, but what makes for a visually pleasing pot doesn’t necessarily mean it‘s well-suited for plants. Drainage is key, so if there are no holes, add a layer of substrate like gravel or broken pots, and keep a watchful eye on water levels. And a keen houseplant enthusiast can spot an amateur a mile off for not using a glazed saucer.

Tropical houseplants, like huge, split-leaved philodendrons and lush pothos plants with their trailing vines, have a retro quality to them and hark back to the 1970s vogue for loft living, the industrial conversions and their huge, casement windows just begging for a patchwork of plants. These types of flora need low-maintenance, but specific care; their holy trinity of needs — light, humidity, temperature — must all be in alignment and they should not, under any circumstances, be moved outside. Most originated in jungle ecosystems where it is quite hot and moist. Maidenhair and Boston variety ferns make for fabulous houseplants, but you’ll need a mister to keep them suitably hydrated.

The indoor-outdoor sort of house plant is just that, one which can be brought inside or left out as suits the season. These plants often have an elegant, country-house feel; they scream ‘my gardener has just brought in this lemon tree from the greenhouse’ (even if you live in a top-floor, city flat). Think herbs, or myrtle, trained in standard topiary form and used to flank a mantel or sideboard — like garden designer Bunny Mellon famously did — or a humble bowl full of violets, dug up, unceremoniously, from the garden and used as a table centrepiece.

Pelargoniums are the undoubted heroines of the genre, classics for a good reason and endlessly addictive to grow and collect. Originally from South Africa, they love bright, direct sunlight, moderate watering and a cool dormant winter — all easy enough to manage indoors, though they will benefit from a summer holiday to the nearest sunny balcony or terrace. The deliciously pepperminty Pelargonium tomentosum, as selected by Jane, is an excellent indoor specimen. It is tolerant of gentle light and its velvet leaves will tumble nicely rather than grow leggy and loopy as other pelargoniums are wont to do if they don’t get enough sun.

Houseplants effectively extend your garden inside, a boon to city dwellers or those with small gardens. And to those worried about maintenance, ease up on your need to get it right, right away. As a wise man once said, a few house plants will probably die in order to learn how to keep them alive.

The garden you'd most want as your actual back garden

The big show gardens on the largest plots tend to dominate the headlines at Chelsea, but this year it's one of the entries in the Small Show Gardens category that earns our vote: the Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City garden.

It's the creation of garden designers Joe and Laura Carey, a Norfolk-based husband-and-wife team — and it's won them their third gold medal in four years at the Chelsea Flower Show.

'It's a garden you feel you could live in, and enjoy the planting there,' says Kathryn Bradley-Hole, Country Life's former gardens editor of this beautiful space. 'Absolutely,' says garden photographer Clive Nichols. 'I think we'd both happily have that as our back garden.'

Most ambitious garden

Sarah Eberle's design for The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden — ‘On the Edge’ — was unarguably the standout.

The vast stone arch alone might have done it, but the undisputed talking point was the giant fallen tree carved into a giant Mother Earth-style head. Epic in scale, as well as a clear and moving comment on the state of the world. Sarah had actually retired from making show gardens, but the CPRE coaxed her back — and we're very glad they did.

The 'look what I brought home' award

'But darling, they were only £3,000 — I could hardly leave them there now, could I?'

Chi Africa's stand of animal sculptures is tucked away, yet unmissable thanks to the giraffes. For those with gardens less able to take a 9ft sculpture, they also had a family of ducks, some penguins, a spitting cobra and an adorable little warthog. Very Lion King.

Most heroic use of gravel

Last year, the Japanese designer Kazuyuki Ishihara won the Besst in Show award. This year, working alongside Paul Noritaka Tange to create 'Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa', he's outdone himself once again. A masterpiece wrought in gravel.

The garden you’d happily downsize for

The container gardens at Chelsea are always full of clever, charming and beautiful spaces — we particularly loved the Persian-inspired Flood Re: Contain the Rain, designed by John Howlett.

Best small space with delusions of grandeur

Boon’s ‘Chelsea Cabin’ is the garden shed that dreamed it was a country cottage. It’s clad inside and out in reclaimed timber and features one bedroom, a bathroom, double-glazed windows, a wood burning stove and a minty green bath on the deck and gravel terrace.

Best use of rusty metal that somehow looks chic

A surprisingly hotly contested category this year, but there was a clear winner: Capital Garden Products 'Pavilion Glasshouse with rust finish' — so beautiful that you'll forgive the fact that it's a glasshouse without glass...

There's an honourable mention to make as well, though: ArtFe's highland cows.

Why is one wearing a traffic cone on its head? We're presuming that it hit the King's Road with a group of students the night before the show began.

The ‘yes, but could you mow it?’ award

Another hotly contested category — never before have we seen so little lawn at the Chelsea Flower Show — but this has to go to 'Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth'. How brave it is to create a garden based on one of the world's driest and most featureless deserts... and yet, Max Parker-Smith's design is utterly beautiful.

The 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' award

'Who doesn't love Sir David Attenborough? What could go wrong making a model of him from great British textiles?'

'Apart from turning him into a zombie, you mean?'

The most handsome, yet simultaneously horrifying, garden gnome

Garden gnomes will always be in Marmite territory. So why not double down and create one that goes beyond 'love it or hate it' and all the way to 'adore it or think it's so appalling that those responsible should get lifetime bans from Chelsea'? That's seemingly the Harkness Roses approach.

Most heroic interpretation of rewilding

When weeds grow up through the cracks at home, you pull them up and get out the spray. When weeds grow up through the cracks at the Chelsea Flower Show, you get applauded for your bravery. That's just the way it is, and The Children’s Society Garden — designed by Patrick Clarke — just doubles down and somehow pulls it off.

Best garden to sit in and ignore emails

In some years, the houseplant gardens have tended to be just a bit you walk past between the main show gardens and the container and balcony gardens at Chelsea. This year, they were among the most beautiful there. The Composer's Cabin, designed by Martha Krempel x London St Pancras Highspeed, was the best of them: a living roof, a grand piano inside, wonderful planting and by far the comfiest looking garden seats of Chelsea 2026. We loved it.

Most theatrically-scented bloom

Can you stop and smell the flowers at Chelsea? Not really, to be honest: the show gardens are kept safely behind ropes, and even the lucky few getting guided tours are shooed around relatively speedily. In the main marquee, things are different, and David Austin's stand does it brilliantly, with a flower walk letting you bask among the blooms, and even a scent bar. The King's Rose, originally introduced last year, may not be particularly pretty, but it's got a scent like a long weekend in Morocco.

The 'is that it?' award for the biggest disappointment

The RHS awarded its coveted 'plant of the year' award to the extraordinary achievement of creating the first ever red hosta. Sadly, the plant itself didn't play ball by flowering in time for the show. Sad times.

Best water feature which actually serves a practical purpose

Arit Anderson's design ('Parkinson’s UK — A Garden for Every Parkinson’s Journey') is one of the standout show gardens at the 2026 Chelsea Flower Show... and its highlight is a magnificent rill which snakes its way through the entire space. Sinuous, beautiful and actually quite a good way of watering the plants — unlike most of the fountains, spouts and mini-waterfalls you'll see elsewhere at Chelsea.

And finally... the garden you'll be talking about on the way home award

It has to be Darren Hawkes design of the Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent No More’ Garden: grand, impressive, beautifully planted, full of interest, and raising awareness of the five gynaecological cancers. It's a Chelsea classic.

Eberle had actually retired from creating show gardens for the annual celebration of gardening in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, but was persuaded to come back by the CPRE.

She'll be glad that she did, as will all those who've seen her work: the garden is nothing short of breathtaking, and she now has 14 show garden gold medals and four best-in-show awards to her name — more than any other gardener in the 113-year history of the Chelsea Flower Show.

Chris Bailes of the judging panel praised the garden's 'elements of myth and remarkable theatre. The planting speaks to an exceptionally rare sense of atmosphere, created through a clear connection to the urban and the countryside. Unexpected beauty is found in the concrete drain repurposed from an agricultural accessory into a mesmerising water feature using common duckweed. The garden achieves a beautiful, natural planting style that is difficult to accomplish, bringing wildness into a garden space with elegance and light touch.'

It's not just the huge scale of the carving, but also the detail — particularly around the willow sculptures that are both around and part of the piece: 'The very twiggy hair bit is I think one of those "dead hedges", a habitat for rodents and other woodland creatures,' points out Kathryn Bradley-Hole.

Garden photographer Clive Nichols points out how the flow into each other, with the willow carving become one with the walls: Mother Earth's 'hair' flows to the dry-stone arch that snakes through the garden, while her hand hand touches water from a shallow pool.

The garden has hidden stories, too: the plants have been sourced from fly-tipped garden waste, showing that many of the natural flowers we often dismiss as weeds are actually 'rich, diverse and textural', and 'vital to our ecosystems'. The garden as a whole 'symbolises hope and resilience on our doorstep, and that with with the right care, these fragile places can recover and thrive for future generations.'

'I am thrilled to bits to receive Garden of the Year,' says Eberle.

'The difference between a good garden and a great garden is how it makes you feel and I'm often told by the next generation of gardeners that I have inspired them, which, if nothing else, is the greatest gift of all. This garden's mission is very personal to me. I am a country girl through and through so I embody the same message and beliefs that the Campaign to Protect Rural England and this garden holds.'

Among the smaller gardens the overall winner was A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge Sponsored by Viking, designed by Katerina Kantalis.

Again, it's a garden whose details add layers of richness. It's designed as a sanctuary for an imagined retired couple, who have downsized to a small home in London, but who still want a space to share their lives, their stories and their dreams with each other and their families.

In the Small Show Gardens category, the overall winner was another space designed to fit into a London home. The Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City garden, created by husband and wife duo Joe and Laura Carey, offers 'sanctuary, freedom and community amid the urban rush'.

It's another of the gardens that was picked out by Kathryn and Clive for special praise on the Country Life Podcast, with both naming it the garden they'd most like to have at their own home.

Marie-Louise Agius, chair of the RHS's judging panel, called the garden, 'a subtle, dignified and elegant design,' and 'a masterpiece in the importance of pocket planting for green spaces in cities.'

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Show Gardens

GOLD AND 'BEST IN SHOW' WINNER: The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: ‘On the Edge’ by Sarah Eberle

Sarah Eberle's giant carved Mother Earth is one of the most eye-catching things we've seen at Chelsea in years, and the garden around it is magnificent.

GOLD: Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent No More’ Garden by Darren Hawkes

Richly deserved award for a dramatic garden with a great story to tell.

GOLD: The Children’s Society Garden by Patrick Clarke Landscapes

A relaxed atmosphere designed for putting teens at their ease — and Patrick Clarke's garden has plenty of post-industrial chic.

GOLD: The Killik & Co ‘A Seed in Time’ Garden by Baz Grainger

Water features are everywhere at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026, but nobody worked them harder than Baz Grainger.

GOLD: The Tate Britain Garden by Tom Stuart-Smith

The perennial star of Chelsea strikes gold again: by our count this is his ninth top award for a show garden at SW3.

SILVER GILT: The Eden Project: Bring Me Sunshine Garden by Harry Holding and Alex Michaelis

SILVER GILT: The Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa by Kazuyuki Ishihara and Paul Noritaka Tange

SILVER: The Asthma and Lung UK Breathing Space Garden by Angus Thompson

SILVER: Parkinson’s UK – A Garden for Every Parkinson’s Journey by Arit Anderson

Small show gardens

GOLD: Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City by Joe and Laura Carey

GOLD: Trussell's Together Garden by Rob Hardy

SILVER GILT: The Boodles Garden by Catherine MacDonald

SILVER GILT: Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth by Max Parker-Smith

Balcony Gardens

GOLD AND 'BEST BALCONY/CONTAINER GARDEN' WINNER: A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge sponsored by Viking — balcony garden by Katerina Kantalis

GOLD: Hedgerow in the Sky – Tech Mahindra — balcony garden by Sarah Mayfield and Monika Greenhough

GOLD: Tales from the Riverbank Garden sponsored by Kennedys’ Independent Property Agents — balcony garden by Susie Kennedy and Kate Henning

SILVER GILT: The Transient Garden — balcony garden by Rebecca Lloyd Jones

SILVER GILT: Fettercairn: The Angels’ Share — balcony garden by May Starey

Container Gardens

GOLD: Flood Re: Contain the Rain Garden — container garden by John Howlett

GOLD: The Whittard of Chelsea Garden — container garden by Ollie Pike

SILVER: Alzheimer’s Society: Microbes and Minds Garden — container garden by Tina Worboys

BRONZE: The Seasalt Painted Garden — container garden by Lynn James

BRONZE: The Sightsavers Garden: We Start With Sight But We Don’t Stop There — container garden by Peter Karn, Sarah Fisher and Janice Molyneux

Hello and welcome to the second day of RHS Chelsea 2026. Do you like flowers? Do you like people? Do you like rain? Do you like people looking at flowers in the rain? So do we. Follow along as we bring you the best of the action at this year's event, from the best gardens, to new flowers, and everything in between.

Guiding you on this horticultural odyssey will be me, James Fisher, stationed in the tallest spire of Country Life towers. On the ground and reporting to me with the all the latest green-fingered goodness will be our crack squad of reporters: Rosie Paterson, Toby Keel and Florence Allen.

We hope you enjoy our coverage of the day and do let us know your thoughts by contacting us on any of our social media channels.

RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year: 'The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: "On the Edge"' by Sarah Eberle
RHS Chelsea Small Garden of the Year: 'Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City' by Joe and Laura Carey
Best Balcony and Container Garden: 'A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge sponsored by Viking', by Katerina Kantalis
Best All About Plants Garden: 'Woodland Trust: Forgotten Forests Garden' by Ashleigh Aylett
Best Construction (Show Garden): 'Lady Garden Foundation "Silent No More" Garden', built by Landscape Associates
Best Construction (Small Show Garden): 'Trussell's Together Garden', built by Peter Gregory Landscapes
RHS Environmental Innovation Award: 'The Eden Project: Bring Me Sunshine Garden' designed by Harry Holding and Alex Michaelis
Best Houseplant Studio: 'An Ode To Endurance', designed by Natalia Drezek and Jinhyun Ahn, Conservatory Archives

You can have a more in-depth look at the medallists by clicking here

Good morning, and welcome back to Country Life's live coverage from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026. I am once again wrangling our crack squad of reporters on the ground in SW3 to bring you everything you need to know about day two of the nation's favourite flower show.

I was quite gutted I couldn't go yesterday and do some celebrity spotting. But looking out the window today, I am a bit more relieved. But I suppose the gardens and the gardeners will be happy, even if the punters might be getting a little wet.

Lots to bring you today. We've got more 'Chelsea in Three' videos (I am getting reports there might be a Traitor among us), gnome discourse, what else to do in SW3, Gold Medals, Best in Show, Country Life's unofficial awards, best food, and much much more. Frankly more than one man in his spare bedroom can handle. But handle it he will, because he is dedicated to you the reader. And also to flowers.

Stay tuned! Here is a gnome to kick off our day.

Day one recap

A reminder that yesterday was press day at RHS Chelsea, where lots of green-fingered journalists mingled with green-fingered celebrities and judges finished off their rounds to choose who goes home with what.

You can recap (almost) everything that happened by reading our coverage of day one here.

Today is the first day us Normal People are allowed in, and is also the day when awards are handed out. We'll bring you everything we can, including Gold Medals and Best in Show, as they are announced.

BREAKING: Country Life's 'Garden Lover's Library' wins Five-Star Tradestand Award

Very excitingly, I can announce the first award of the day, and it's arguably the most important one: Country Life's 'Garden Lover's Library' has been awarded five stars by the RHS, the maximum honour for a tradestand at RHS Chelsea.

The stand, designed by George Saumarez Smith, is absolutely divine and please do come visit us at PW215 and see it for yourselves. Featuring a plethora of vintage gardening books, stone by Somerset specialist Artorius Faber, plants from the gardener Jane Kennerley, wallcoverings by Watts 1874 and furniture by Munder Skiles, the space is a real symphony of British interior design.

If you'd like to find out more about the stand, you can do so by clicking here.

When are the awards handed out?

Today is awards day, where Medals are dished out by the judges. We'll also be finding out which garden wins Best in Show, and if Kazuyuki Ishihara will defend his crown.

Most of the Gold Medals are handed out from 8am onwards, so we'll be finding out who won those soon enough, while the announcement of Best in Show is usually around 11am.

As soon as we know who's won what, you'll know.

In the meantime, queues are slowly moving as RHS Members make their way into the show, hidden under a sea of umbrellas. Talk about the Great British Summer eh?

A Traitor stalks the grounds at RHS Chelsea

Yesterday, we sent Florence Allen out to ask the many celebrities wandering around the Royal Hospital three key questions: 'Favourite flower', 'Wildflower meadow or manicured lawn' and 'To gnome or not to gnome'? Vital questions that demand answers.

We've got plenty of videos to bring you, but first up today is a two-for-one special, with Rachel 'the best Traitor of all time' Duffy and Aisling Bea.

A springtime Father Christmas

I won an award once, a long time ago. It was for property journalism, if you can believe that, and it was at a very nice dinner in central London. I got invited up on stage, collected my shiny plaque, took a picture with Phil Spencer and then walked back to my table. No speech, as my words are too powerful.

That's traditionally how you would accept an award. A less traditional way is to be stuck in a fireplace, which is what happened to our Interiors Editor Giles Kime when the RHS came to pay us a visit this morning...

The good news is that he eventually crawled out, and Giles and Editor Mark Hedges were delighted to accept our five-star award. Once again, congratulations to everyone involved on making the Garden Lover's Library such an excellent stand.

Under brollies, being jolly

In case you haven't looked out a window this morning, it's a bit wet today. Not that it's putting people off. Hearing rumours that we might be putting together a 'Best Brolly' competition....

Some early front runners below

What else to do in SW3: Chelsea in Bloom

Do you want to get in on some of the RHS Chelsea action, but don't have a ticket? Fear not, as you can always head down to SW3 and get involved with Chelsea In Bloom, a week-long floral arts festival that takes over the neighbourhood. And it's completely free.

This year's theme is 'Out of This World', so expect lots of space and zodiac-inspired floral sculptures, UFOs, and bizarre creatures adorning the shops, cafés, restaurants and hotels of Chelsea.

Alongside goings on at the Royal Hospital today, we'll also be bringing you some highlights from one of London's best spring street festivals.

What to eat at RHS Chelsea: Chocolate-dipped pain aux raisins

But first, more food.

As mentioned, we will try and review the best bites to eat while at the show, because we here at Country Life yearn for you to have the finest things in life, at all times, in all places.

Kicking things off with a chocolate-dipped pain aux raisins. Rosie says: 'I've never seen this before. Feels very unique to Chelsea and, frankly, headline worthy'.

We're going to assume 'headline worthy' means very good, so it's a 10/10.

Where to find us

As mentioned, we want you to come and visit our five-star stand (PW215). Come and bask in some of the finest interior design the country has to offer and maybe consider buying a subscription. We've got some amazing deals on, and it's basically like getting 51 issues of this live blog delivered to your door for a year. What's not to love.

If you visit the stand, you can buy a year-long subscription to Country Life for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. There are also international offers available.

But wait! There's more!

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life (that's us) as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Plant of the year 2026: Red Ninja Hosta

While we wait for Gold Medals and Best in Show, yesterday evening saw the announcement of the RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year 2026, which is this Hosta 'Red Ninja'. Now you could be forgiven for thinking this is a bit plain ('looks like a £1.99 pot plant from Home Bargains,' per Toby Keel), but it is actually quite special, as it is the world's first red-variegated hosta.

Described as a 'real talking point for modern shade planting', Red Ninja 'brings an unexpected splash of unique colour into the foliage pallette of hostas'. It's also named Red Ninja, which is a sick name for a plant, if we're honest. Many congratulations to breeder Ninja Kramer for producing it. It will be available to order from the summer.

Gardens in small spaces: A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge, sponsored by Viking

Rosie Paterson has been roaming the grounds of Chelsea, looking for inspiration. She's just filed the following report from the Balcony and Container Gardens area:

'I’ve been to see the balcony gardens because I’m moving into a new flat in July with a large — by London standards — balcony.

I spoke to Katerina Kantalis who’s just won a Gold Medal for her ‘A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge’ garden, sponsored by Viking.

The space is dominated by edible plants and vegetables — a fantastic example of how gardens, especially small ones where space is at a premium, can be practical and decorative. ‘I want to show off their [the fruits, vegetables and edible plants] beauty,’ says Katerina. She points out purple pak choi, mustard greens with their very architectural leaves and the cabbages with their frilly edges.

The pots are of varying shapes, sizes, finishes and texture — another important thing to keep in mind when landscaping a small space because they distract from the fact that you’re starting base is often a bland rectangular space (5m by 2m in this instance). ‘It softens a lot of the space,’ she says.

The climbing sweet pea plant in one corner adds height and structure, but it too is practical. It attracts pollinators and is nitrogen fixing. The colourful marigolds and pelargoniums are ‘companion plants’ which distract pests from the veggies.

Katerina worked with John Wheatley of Stonebarn Landscapes, a long time RHS collaborator and expert vegetable grower (he’s also worked with Frances Tophill). (Oh, he’s also 80 years old and collecting an MBE today). Rather than using chillers and heaters to make sure everything flowers at the right time, they’ve been growing the veggies and so on since January in waves to make sure something of everything is in prime condition.

Her top tip for someone like me who is just starting out with their own blank and — for now — bland space? ‘Figure out what you want from your space,’ she says. ‘It’s all about understanding: what are you passions, and how do you want to sit in it. Once you’ve worked that out, then you can start to think about how you break the space up.’

BREAKING: Gold Medal winners announced

We have some big awards for you, with the announcement of the Gold Medals for the various gardens around RHS Chelsea. The list is below:

Gold Medal

The Killik & Co 'A Seed in Time' Garden

Lady Garden Foundation 'Silent No More' Garden

The Children's Society Garden

The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: 'On the Edge'

The Tate Britain Garden

Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City

Trussell's Together Garden

Woodland Trust: Forgotten Forests Garden

Clear Gottlieb: Time for Creativity

Flood Re: Contain the Rain Garden

Tales from the Riverbank Garden sponsored by Kennedys' Independent Property Agents

A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge sponsored by Viking

The Whittard of Chelsea Garden

Hedgerow in the Sky – Tech Mahindra

Many congratulations to all the Gold Medal winners. For more information on all the winners, head to the RHS website by clicking here (but then come back to us).

So it seems like there will be no back-to-back Best in Shows for Kazuyuki Ishihara, as his Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa is awarded a Silver Gilt Medal. Who will take home Best in Show I wonder?

Country Life's Rosie Paterson getting a superb whiff of Sir David Beckham there.

In case you missed the news, Sir David is now a rose as well as a person, thanks to the work of David Austin Roses.

Although I am reliably informed Rosie would also happily give the real Sir David a whiff as well.

'People look like their dogs and gardeners look like their plants. It’s inevitable. Don’t fight it'

Apologies for the slight delay in programming, the cats were having a scrap, so had to go and organise some timeouts. Back to plants!

'We're the only veg people. Veg is very underrepresented at Chelsea'

Rosie met up with Kate Cotterill, co-owner of female-founded heirloom vegetable-seed company She Grows Veg.

What is She Grows Veg?

'We only sell heirloom varieties because they're the most beautiful and the most flavoursome. That's what we're obsessed with.'

'Half of our job is actually helping people to grow and succeed, so we have lots of help content. All of the seed packets have a QR code on the back that takes you to a YouTube video on how to grow it. That's how we all learn how to do things these days.

'We're trying to inspire people with our exhibit, which is called "Feast" this year, and it's all around the flavour of heirlooms. You've stumbled into a fantasy woodland scenario, and the wooden creatures have fled, but this is their table and the feast they were having before we all turned up. What we've got planted around in the woodland here, we've actually got cutting flowers and grasses interspersed with vegetables, because that's how we're all meant to be growing now biodiversity is king.'

How did you start the business?

'I had a 25 year career in marketing, and I was running a marketing agency. And on my day off, I went and did a garden-design course. I've always loved growing-my-own and veg gardening and basically sat down on day one of my garden design course and sat next to my co-founder Lucy [Hutchings]. We got on like a house on fire and we stayed in touch for 6-7 years.'

'And then she came to me having shared her veg on Instagram, she was growing lots of mad varieties of veg, and she came to me saying "well all of the people that are following me are saying they want their seeds and they're weird-and-wonderful ones that aren't available in the UK yet". And I did some market research and saw there was actually a market for it, so I quit my job. Lucy was terrified that I'd done that and we just tried and that was 2.5 years ago.'

'This is now our third year at Chelsea. We've gone from a team of two to a team of 48 in 2.5 years. We're the only veg people. Veg is very underrepresented at Chelsea. You see it in some of the trade stands and you know, the greenhouses and things like that, but not a dedicated proper celebration, not properly waving the flag for veg, which is what we do.'

Three best heirloom vegetables to start with?

'A tomato is a really nice way to appreciate heirlooms because the flavours are so much better with an heirloom tomato. So definitely a tomato.'

'The Swiss chard that we talked about, so peppermint chard, just because it's so easy and it's year-round colour. So you can be harvesting all year round.'

'And I think probably the third one is our drying corn, which you can see sort of draped there, that actually is made into popcorn, but it has the most beautiful colours. So you can either use it as a really pretty decoration in the autumn or, you know, Halloween time of year, or you can actually pop it as popcorn, and it's really fun for the family and the kids.'

What is your definition of heirloom?

'So heirloom is something that's 50 years old or older. And basically, it's a type that is stable. And that means is that if you harvest that variety, so harvest the tomatoes, save the seeds, they would be true to type if you try to grow them again. Most of the other seed companies in the UK sell hybrids or F1s.'

'Hybrids and F1s were originally created for farming, where you want a guaranteed crop of, you know, volume, size, you want everything to be uniform. But actually, what that does is dilutes flavour. So we've all had a, you know, a tomato from the supermarket that tastes of nothing. And that is why.'

'So actually, we are bringing back all the heirlooms because if you're going to bother to grow-your-own, you want the best tasting and the prettiest on the plate, don't you? We're trying to re-educate everyone about the wonder of heirlooms, and, as you can see, they're very pretty and they are also delicious.'

A few four-legged friends

Dogs are not allowed at RHS Chelsea, unless they are working in some capacity. Country Life did have some four-legged visitors yesterday, who were all doing important security work, we were assured...

'The wildness has a different effect on your brain': Chelsea in Three with Nick Grimshaw

We caught up with Nick Grimshaw from BBC Radio 6 Music (and loads of other things, we don't have time to list them all) to discuss his thoughts on plants, gnomes and wildflowers.

Is he pro-gnome or anti-gnome? You'll have to watch the video to find out.

A ray of sunshine has broken through the clouds in South East London. Stay strong Chelsea people, it's on its way

Nick Grimshaw's video reminded me that I'm pretty sure Tom Allen described himself as a gnome yesterday...

Watch it below and let me know

Take a look: The Transient Garden, sponsored by Hamptons

While we wait for the announcement of the Best in Show winner, let's have a look at a few more of the gardens you can see at RHS Chelsea.

As previously mentioned, I enjoy doing cool things with small spaces (I am a millennial living in London, I don't really have a choice, but I like to stay positive). Naturally, I am drawn to the Balcony/Container Gardens category.

I am particularly fond of this creation by Rebecca Lloyd Jones, titled the Transient Garden. It was built by the Garden Club London and is sponsored by Hamptons. Per the RHS, the garden 'demonstrates practical and achievable ideas for creating a relaxing balcony garden within a compact space'. Indeed, it seems almost tailor made for many of the capital's new-build apartment buildings, which would certainly look much less unseemly if they had balconies such as this.

There's lots of container planting, folding furniture and vertical structure on display here, adding height and interest 'without overwhelming the space'. I am very fond of the colourful scheme and the use of Armeria maritima 'Morning Star White', Eriobotrya japonica, and Cornus kousa 'Cappuccino'. If there's one thing we millennials love, it's an expensive coffee.

Once the show is over, the garden will be relocated to an undisclosed community space. The theme 'Transient Garden' reflects on flexibility and adaptability, meaning the garden can be easily altered and reconfigured by two people.

Spotted: RHS Chelsea's most important visitor

Some might say it's The King and Queen, some might say it's Monty Don or Alan Titchmarsh, others (me) might say it's Country Life Editor Mark Hedges.

But Rosie Paterson is very wise, and she makes the rather compelling argument that the most important visitor at RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the humble bumblebee. Here's a white-tailed version greedily browsing a salvia x sylvesteis.

Say hello to Zinc the tree pathogen detection dog

Yesterday, Florence Allen managed to sit down for a quick chat with Zinc and Paul Beals from the Animal and Plant Health Agency

You’ve heard of detection dogs sniffing out drugs, explosives, even illnesses in humans — but have you heard of dogs detecting tree pathogens? Well neither had I, but here we are. Meet Zinc, the dog sniffing out tree pathogens for the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s ‘Scents & Sniffers’. They’re a rarity (for now), with only two currently in training.

As Paul Beals from Animal and Plant Health Agency put it simply, ‘we know that dogs have such an incredible nose they can sense up to 100,000 times more’ than what humans can. The hope is that ‘with their incredible noses as nature’s biosensors, we’re able to enhance our detection skills and spot things before they become a problem.’

Most remarkably of all, the dogs are able to detect issues before visible symptoms even appear. ‘Bringing the dog in earlier enables us to detect a pest or disease before symptoms actually appear,’ said Paul. ‘It’s like an early diagnosis — a rapid diagnostic.’ I’ve said it once and i’ll say it again – we don’t deserve these marvellous creatures.

The sun is well and truly out and I have managed to eat some lunch. Let us tackle the afternoon at the RHS Chelsea Flower show. Onwards, into greenery.

Rosie has been leafing through some old Country Lifes (Countries Life?) on our stand, and found a collection of delightful adverts from decades past. Best not to focus too closely on how much a three-bedroom house in Belgravia used to cost, and just enjoy the richness of advertising copy from the 1960s. It was a different time man, you had to be there.

BREAKING: Sarah Eberle and the Campaign to Protect Rural England win Best in Show for 'On the Edge'

Chelsea's most decorated garden designer has done it again, as Sarah Eberle takes home Best in Show for her garden with the Campaign to Protect Rural England. 'On The Edge', which features a giant wooden carving of Gaia by Chris Wood, impressed the judges most of all and takes home the chocolates.

Sarah Eberle has had quite the career. She is the most decorated designer at RHS Chelsea, with 14 Gold Medals to her name. This is now her third 'Best in Show' garden, following 2007 and 2017, and she is the only designer to win a Gold Medal in every category there is to show.

And, looking at pictures from this year's garden, it's not hard to see why.

Per the RHS, 'On the Edge' focuses on the spaces between our towns and cities, which are often overlooked and undervalued, despite being vital for connecting people to nature. The garden was created for the centenary year of the CPRE and is designed to symbolise 'hope and resilience on our doorstep'.

The garden is set on an imagined piece of undeveloped land on the urban fringe, and is centred around a fallen tree sculpted into a representation of Gaia (or Mother Earth, depending on who you ask).

Naturalised plants from fly-tipped garden waste 'transform neglect into abundance', and there is a diverse and rich ecosystem of plants, blending soft and hard boundaries, a reflection of the fringe space between urban and rural life.

RHS Chelsea: The big winners in full

RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year: 'The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: "On the Edge"' by Sarah Eberle

RHS Chelsea Small Garden of the Year: 'Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City' by Joe and Laura Carey

Best Balcony and Container Garden: 'A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge sponsored by Viking', by Katerina Kantalis

Best All About Plants Garden: 'Woodland Trust: Forgotten Forests Garden' by Ashleigh Aylett

Best Construction (Show Garden): 'Lady Garden Foundation "Silent No More" Garden', built by Landscape Associates

Best Construction (Small Show Garden): 'Trussell's Together Garden', built by Peter Gregory Landscapes

RHS Environmental Innovation Award: 'The Eden Project: Bring Me Sunshine Garden' designed by Harry Holding and Alex Michaelis

Best Houseplant Studio: 'An Ode To Endurance', designed by Natalia Drezek and Jinhyun Ahn, Conservatory Archives

You can have a more in-depth look at the medallists by clicking here

What to eat at RHS Chelsea: Za'atar fries

Stepping away quickly from the excitement of winners and back to food.

My colleague Octavia Pollock is at the Royal Hospital today, and has devoured some za'atar fries with glee. She has this to say:

'If it wasn't bad form to lick the pot of toum I would... crispy, fluffy with a tang of Lebanon, happy reminders of staying in Beirut and wandering along the corniche. A taste of the Eastern Mediterranean in Chelsea, yum'

Country Life score: 9/10

'Hello Boys'

We've had a few famous faces stop by the Garden Lover's Library so far this week. As well as Monty Don, Clare Balding and James Martin, we've also been graced by visits from Rob Brydon and Eva Herzigová. Can't imagine those two have been written about in the same sentence too often...

Martha Kearney: 'Here in the heart of London at the moment it's bee heaven'

Yesterday afternoon, Rosie Paterson was lucky enough to catch up with journalist and presenter Martha Kearney for a quick chat about why RHS Chelsea is buzzing...

What brings you to RHS Chelsea?

I'm a lover of bees and I'm here as a patron of a charity called Bees for Development, which helps beekeepers around the world make a living from honey.

And have you seen a garden or a show garden or a feature garden so far that you think is particularly valuable to bees ?

Well, here in the heart of London at the moment it's bee heaven. And when you wander around the show gardens, there are so many bees out enjoying themselves.

There was one garden in particular which had a row of foxgloves in the background to it and there were so many bees.

So anybody who's keeping hives or making honey nearby must be absolutely delighted, they’ll have the most delicious honey.

I mean, we're standing in the middle of orchids. I haven't seen any bees here yet, but some orchids are pollinated by bees. Somebody in a garden in Chelsea may end up with orchid honey.

And what do you think is the sort of biggest misconception about bees that you would like to combat?

Well, I think people are scared of bees and they're worried about being stung by bees, which is fair enough, and I have been, and I've actually had to stop beekeeping because I had a bad anaphylactic reaction.

But by and large, bees leave people alone and you have to be very unlucky to be stung by bees.

Another misconception is that the only kind of bee is a honey bee. In fact, there are many, many different species of bees in this country. And you can help bees and help pollination by planting for bees. And I know Country Life has some wonderful, features about gardening and about planting for bees. With plants that start early in the year and carry on late in the year, you can help the whole of the British population of bees. There's so many different interesting kinds.

And I've become a bee spotter and I look out for different kinds of bumblebees in my garden and try to work out is that a white tailed bumblebee or a buff tail bumblebee or my favourite, which is the hairy footed flower bee.

We're right in the middle of London at the minute. A lot of people maybe only have small gardens or window boxes. What should they be planting? What's readily available, accessible, easy to plant that will keep bees happy?

Lavender. It’s very hard to kill a lavender. You don't even have to water it that much. You'll get a lot of bumblebees on lavender.

I also like Nepeta or cat mint. Again, it’s very easy to grow and you'll get lots and lots of bees on that.

Sarah Eberle: 'The difference between a good garden and a great garden is how it makes you feel'

My esteemed colleague has managed to track down some quotes from Best in Show winner Sarah Eberle, who came out of retirement to design 'On the Edge' for the Campaign to Protect Rural England. talk about a comeback, like gardening's Michael Jordan.

You can read her thoughts, Toby's thoughts, and the thoughts of various judges and Country Life experts here

Marcus Wareing: 'I'm anti-gnome. They are pests'

Fresh from a sublime interview he did with Lotte Brundle a few weeks ago, chef and cod-liver oil enthusiast Marcus Wareing caught up with Country Life again to run the gauntlet of Chelsea in Three.

The art of the hand and why it is so precious

One final plug for the Garden Lover's Library from me (reminder to come visit us at PW215).

When we asked George Saumarez Smith to collaborate on the project, one of the key reasons we wanted to get him involved was his skill as a draughtsman. In an increasingly digital world, the skill of drawing by hand has never been under greater threat, and few people are as skilled or as talented as George.

You can see here some of the drawings that George made ahead of RHS Chelsea and then compare them to how the stand has been actually realised. Quite an amazing thing.

Giles Kime (Interiors Editor, was briefly trapped in a fireplace) wrote a lovely story last week about the importance and the power of the pen and pencil. Read it here

What to eat at RHS Chelsea: Falafel and hummus pita

Bella Fulford submits this delight. Here's what she had to say:

'Thoroughly enjoyed this. Great sauce-to-filling ratio, though not the easiest thing to eat on the move — I managed to spill tahini on myself while making eye contact with Trinny Woodall. Thank god for the Country Life apron.'

Country Life rating: 7/10

The many RHS Members present have had a great day out today, despite the changing nature of the weather. My minions at the Royal Hospital have reported bumper crowds all day. Below is a short video showing the size of the queue to get into the RHS and The King's Foundation Curious Garden.

It just goes to show that us Brits are resilient people, who will stop at nothing to look at some fine flowers. Makes your heart swell, does it not?

The utterly inessential RHS Chelsea shopping list

Rosie Paterson is never one to avoid a bit of retail therapy, and she's certainly not missed out at RHS Chelsea. She's provided a helpful wish list of things she wants for her birthday/Christmas this year after scouring the show ground for the past two days.

1) A ‘Living Life On The Veg' cap from the She Grows Veg stand in the pavilion.

2) ⁠A cosmos (‘fondant fancy’), because my guilty pleasure is fondant fancy cakes. Might be tricky because this one is a part of an educational stand on peat-free growing and not actually for sale.

3) An oil-skin jerkin from Carrier Company to wear down in Devon

4) Tiny utensils from The Oxford Brush Co. I actually want/need a porridge spurtle — a kitchen essential I’ll have you know — but they aren’t stocking them this year, so this is my consolation purchase

5) ⁠A Fabled Thread artwork. Eppie sells at-home embroidery and needlepoint kits, but I love her ready to buy ones!

'I was always painting, always gardening. I brought the two things that I like together and and here I am'

Yesterday, we wrote about the amazing orchid Cymbidium faberi 'Guanding', which was awarded the extremely prestigious RHS Award of Merit. Today, Rosie Paterson managed to catch up with Deborah Lambkin, the official orchid artist for RHS, to discuss her plans for the glorious plant.

And so what are you doing today?

Every Chelsea Monday morning, the RHS orchid committee have a meeting and we judge orchids. So we judge the orchid stands at the show, but we also have a meeting elsewhere during the show — our usual orchid meeting — talking about the orchid industry. And obviously Chelsea is a very special event of the year.

so you have got this winning orchid in a box and you're going to take it away. And what are you going to do?

This cymbidium orchid has been awarded an award of merit, and I paint the awarded orchids, with the Award of Merit being one of the awards that the committee give, and I always will take a flower from the plant that has been awarded.

I take it home and I paint an A4 painting and the paintings are used as a record that are kept in RHS in their library for posterity and they join the collection of over 7,000 orchid paintings that are in the Lindley library already.

How do you become an orchid painter?

I was always a gardener. I love gardening and as a child, art and gardening are the two things that I always loved doing. And then, I studied art and after I did my degree in art, I specialised in illustrating. I worked in advertising for a few years, but then I specialised in illustration.

I was always painting, always gardening. I brought the two things that I like together and and here I am.

Goodbye and thank you

It's almost time to say goodbye from day two at RHS Chelsea, so before I go just want to say thank you to everyone for joining me and for reading my ramblings on plants and people. It's been a pleasure!

Thank you to Rosie, Toby and Florence for being on the ground and providing so much amazing content and creativity to the blog. Keep an eye on the Country Life website, on our Instagram and our TikTok (yes, really) for heaps more RHS Chelsea content throughout the week.

One last thing, which is my Chelsea in Three, specifically requested by reader Sam Harris-Short. Here they are:

Favourite flower: I love a lavender. They smell amazing and are super good for bees. I also like bees.

Wildflower meadow or manicured lawn: Despite being a keen cricketer and golfer, I do prefer a wildflower meadow. Probably because I spend a lot of time in them when playing both.

Gnome or no gnome: I'm a big gnome guy. My aunt in Germany always gives them to members of the family for Christmas, and I have one in my house. My girlfriend hates it, but I love it.

Thanks again for joining me these past two days, and if you are at the show on Friday, come say hello to me on the stand, I'll be the tall one with the beard!

Goodbye!

Hello and welcome to the first day of RHS Chelsea 2026. Do you like flowers? Do you like people? Do you like people looking at flowers? So do we. Follow along as we bring you the best of the action at this year's event, from the best gardens, to new flowers, and everything in between.

Guiding you on this horticultural odyssey will be me, James Fisher, stationed in the tallest spire of Country Life towers. On the ground and reporting to me with the all the latest green-fingered goodness will be our crack squad of reporters: Rosie Paterson, Toby Keel and Florence Allen.

We hope you enjoy our coverage of the day and do let us know your thoughts by contacting us on any of our social media channels.

First things first....

Allow me to introduce you to the Country Life stand at this year's show. It's called the 'Garden Lover's Library' and it was designed, by hand, by George Saumarez Smith of ADAM Architecture. If you would like to visit, then please make your way to stand PW215, and we'd be delighted to see you.

'I love interiors that include things handed down over the years, with furniture and pictures that don’t quite go together and slightly clashing colour schemes,' says George. 'The defining element of English style is that things are a little bit imperfect.'

Featuring a plethora of vintage gardening books, stone by Somerset specialist Artorius Faber, plants from the gardener Jane Kennerley, wallcoverings by Watts 1874 and furniture by Munder Skiles, the space is a real symphony of British interior design.

If you'd like to find out more about the stand, you can do so by clicking here.

And, of course, we have pictures....

If seeing the best of British design isn't reason enough to visit our stand, perhaps I could tempt you with some frankly absurd subscription offers? Honestly, as deals go, they don't come much more generous than this.

If you visit the stand, you can buy a year-long subscription to Country Life for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. There are also international offers available.

But wait! There's more!

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life (that's us) as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

If you see any typos, please forgive me, as I stayed up too late last night watching Aaron Rai win the USPGA Championship. First English winner of the tournament in 107 years! That's almost as long as Country Life has been around (129 years). That 69ft putt on the 17th was crazy. Congratulations to Aaron.

Right, now back to flowers and things of that nature. Prepare yourself for the first of our Chelsea in Three video series, which we'll posting periodically throughout the day....

First up, here's Country Life's Interiors Editor Giles Kime answering three quick-fire questions on his 'flower of the hour', lawns vs wildflower meadows and to gnome, or not to gnome.

First bit of news from the day (apart from the unveiling of Country Life's glorious stand) is that David Beckham has had a new rose designed for him. It is called the David Beckham Rose and the new variety was created by David Austin Roses. You can go and see it at David Austin's rose-filled garden (GPF075) and the rose is available to purchase now.

The David Beckham rose is an English shrub rose, and was created as a gift by Harper Beckham to her father for his 50th birthday. As well as being a 'symbol of enduring love', the rose also supports the King's Foundation, where Sir David serves as an ambassador. A donation of £2.50 from every sale will be given to the charity, which works to build sustainable communities and provide practical education programmes.

Gaze upon the rose of Sir David below...

I am receiving the first whispers of Show Gardens from my army of roving reporters on the ground. Some initial thoughts coming imminently. Contain your excitement if you can.

First reaction: 'It all feels very calm and peaceful and reflective'

Rosie Paterson, Digital Content Director at Country Life, has been walking around the grounds of the Royal Hospital this morning. Here are her initial thoughts from the show.

'Every year there's a lot of water, water features, pools, lazy river-style waterways, but unlike other years, there's nothing dramatic about the water this year. There's nothing really fast flowing, no waterfalls, or at least not as much as there has been in the past. It's very calm, very relaxing, lots of contemplative pools. The Natural Swimming Pool Company has a tradestand where they've built a miniature natural swimming pool.'

'It all feels very calm and peaceful and reflective, especially in the show gardens, I haven't come across any with hard edges to the planting.'

As much as the Show Gardens are considered the real stars of RHS Chelsea, I am a man who has spent the majority of his life in cities. I have also found extreme joy in the ability of people to plant and create nature in the smallest of places. In short, I am a sicko for a well-stocked balcony.

Which is good, because RHS Chelsea has plenty of those. Viking UK, the river, ocean and expedition cruise company, has sponsored this delightful balcony garden, titled 'A Little Garden of Shared Knowledge'. Look how much stuff they've squeezed into such a small space.

This is the fifth consecutive year that Viking has sponsored a balcony garden (when you think about, cruise ships have quite a lot of balconies). The garden was designed by Katerina Kantalis for an imaginary, well-travelled retired couple with a passion for horticulture and the Arts. Not sure how imaginary that is, as I would consider most of our readers to be all of those things.

Rosie Paterson: 'We have our first sighting of Alan Titchmarsh...'

For those that don't know, Alan Titchmarsh is the gardening equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil. Once he's been spotted within the grounds of the Royal Hospital, the Flower Show can officially begin.

'The garden is so different, on different levels, and so is Parkinson’s'

Some images and quotes now from Caroline Rassell, CEO of Parkinson's UK. The charity has created 'A Garden for Every Parkinson's Journey', which was inspired by the Parkinson's community, and designed to support the many symptoms of the disease.

'The garden has been pulled together by people who have Parkinson's, as well as our brilliant designer Arit Anderson, whose sister has Parkinson's, and every single section tells something about a symptom of Parkinson's,' says Caroline.

'So that beautiful handrail that you can see is there to help people if they become unsteady, because sometimes people with Parkinson's have problems walking, but also the water that's running through it acts as a prompt. Sometimes people with Parkinson's freeze, they literally can't move, and they need something that helps them start to move forward again and that the audible cue from the water is something that will help people if they freeze to then move forward again.

So the beauty of what you see is actually telling the story [of Parkinson’s].

We've got a rose that's been specifically designed for us called the Parkinson's resilience rose, and that's a scentless rose. One of the symptoms of Parkinson's is that you lose your sense of smell.

So again that represents something that people with Parkinson's will resonate with, and we're actually funding groundbreaking research to understand why people lose their sense of smell, and if that is something that we can address in any way.

Five pounds from every rose sale goes towards Parkinson's UK research. and yes, it's available to anybody who wants to buy this beautiful Harkness rose. And then there is a beautiful night garden, there's a shelter and underneath that there are white plants, where it's very calm and very tranquil, because again, one of the symptoms of Parkinson's is insomnia.

'The garden is so different on different levels, and so is Parkinson’s. Once you’ve met one person with Parkinson’s, you’ve met one person with Parkinson’s, and this as varied as everybody with Parkinson’s.'

Chelsea in Three: Rosie Paterson

Next up to run the gauntlet of gnome-related nonsense is our Digital Content Director, Rosie Paterson.

I was worried that I might not have enough stuff to post about, but I honestly cannot type fast enough. I am not usually a coffee drinker, but I'm on my fourth cup already.

Behold, a giant washing machine

'This washing machine is 10ft tall and covered in flowers. Why is it here?' asks Toby Keel.

'It’s a stand created by Lucy Lewis of Sparsholt College, showcasing Washday Hues, which has been created to explore the historical relationship between fabrics and plants. Everything on the stand is used to dye fabrics a range of colours.'

Neat. Reminds me, I've got a giant pile of washing to do back at home. Maybe even more than a 10ft-tall machine can handle. There's just never enough time in the day you know? And then you have to hang it all up and fold it and put it all away and gosh it never ends....

Alan Titchmarsh and Frances Tophill spotted holding gnomes

To celebrate the playful tradition at the King's residence at Highgrove, Alan Titchmarsh CBE, Tom Allen, Frances Tophill, Bill Bailey and Angellica Bell appear with the gnomes they have painted to raise money for the RHS Campaign for School Gardening. They are joined by Melissa Simpson, Head of Horticulture at The Kings Foundation, and garden contractor, Jake Catling from The Landscaping Consultants.

A reminder, the RHS usually bans gnomes at the Chelsea Flower Show, but has allowed them this year in order to raise money for the RHS' work with schools. Sir Brian May, Cate Blanchett and Dame Mary Berry have also painted gnomes, which will be auctioned off online from May 15–24.

Speaking of Tom Allen....

Chelsea in Three: Tom Allen

Comedian, singer and garden favourite Tom Allen stopped by the Country Life stand to answer vital questions, such as 'what is your favourite flower' and 'to gnome or not to gnome'.

Peonies seem to be a lot of people's favourite plants (including, but not limited to, my ex-girlfriend). So I've dispatched Toby Keel to go and find some. He has returned with this display from Primrose Hill Peonies.

'Primrose Hill Peonies isn't a dance troupe from North London, but instead a Bedfordshire nursery growing RHS Gold Medal winning flowers — and also holding the "Plant Heritage National Collection for intersectional peony varieties" — or so it says in their flyer'

Thank you Toby.

My favourite flower, in case anyone was wondering, is a snowdrop. Specifically the 'grumpy' variety.

Where do all the gardens go?

It's only the first day, but it is a curious question. What happens to all the gardens after the show is finished? We've got the answers.

'Every year, people ask what happens to the gardens and plants at Chelsea,' says Toby Keel. 'This year, there’s a stand dedicated to showing the answer. Wayward Plants are the RHS’s partners in What Happens Next, with schools, hospitals and many more places ending up homing exhibits from the show.'

We also asked RHS Chelsea Judge and all-around great guy James Alexander-Sinclair to explain it in a bit more detail, which you can read about here

Bit of shameless self-promotion incoming. A reminder that you can visit Country Life at stand PW215. Come see the Garden Lover's Library. You're reading a blog about RHS Chelsea, which means you probably like both reading and gardens. And probably libraries too.

We've asked some of Country Life's editorial team what they like about the stand. Have a read below.

Giles Kime, Interiors Editor: 'The collection of gardening book that George Saumarez Smith has put together specially for the Show, and which he is giving to his fiancée Jane when they get married this summer'

Mark Hedges, Editor: 'The fireplace where you can see on it — my degree was in geology — the fragments of fossils. They’re called crinoids. They’re very primitive sort of razor clams. And I think the blue-grey colour picks out the wall colour so well'

A reminder that you can read all about the stand by clicking here...

Extremely perfect example of orchid wins RHS Order of Merit

Earlier in the day, Rosie Paterson caught up with Jacob James, founder and director of GrowTropicals, to discuss orchids. Jacob has turned up to RHS Chelsea with many delightful plants under his proverbial belt, but one in particular has caught the eye of the judges....

'That one, which is not on the desk at the moment because they're taking photos in the corner, that's Cymbidium faberi 'Guam'. That one won an Order of Merit, which is a really prestigious award for the RHS,' Jacob says.

'It's the first time they've ever issued one at Chelsea Flower Show, because normally it has to go to a meeting where they inspect it, but because they come from China, they made an exception and held an extraordinary meeting here to judge it. And that's to do with having a perfect example of the flower. That was this morning. Hot off the press, the certificates have only just been written.'

You can see this glorious plant, as well as more orchids than you can shake a stick at, at the GrowTropicals stand in the Great Pavilion.

No trip to south-west or central London is complete without a visit to Petersham Nurseries. Their stand at RHS Chelsea is about as glamorous as you would expect, says Toby Keel.

The stand is inspired by the conservatory of Petersham House, with this studio designed to be a 'retreat'. It's 'rooted in the restorative rhythm of the natural world' and is a place where 'conversations unfold and the mind settles'. Delightful.

A sensible question might be: 'what is the complete and total opposite of Petersham Nurseries'. We are glad you asked. We reckon it's this installation from Lovehoney, titled Aphrodite's Hothouse. 'More Soho than Chelsea,' says Toby Keel.

Former 'Girl in Pearls' observes Tate Britain Garden

Grayson Perry CBE RA is one of the many artists and celebrities attending RHS Chelsea today. He's pictured above in the Tate Britain Garden, 'an engaging and sustainable landscape which presents a new vision for how art, nature and community come together.'

A reminder that he was once a Frontispiece (or 'Girl in Pearls') for Country Life, back in 2020. His biography at the time noted that he is 'an artist, broadcaster, lecturer, transvestite, television addict, worshipper of teddy bears and keen cyclist'.

Grayson will also lead children from a local primary school in an art activity next to Barbara Hepworth's sculpture Bicentric Form, the first time a work from the nation's art collection has been shown at RHS Chelsea.

'I could tell the plant anything I wanted to, about anything, and my secrets would be safe with it'

Rosie Paterson has caught up with Jane Kennerley, who designed and arranged all the beautiful plants and flowers on the Country Life stand, to ask her what her favourite plant is in the 'Garden Lover's Library'. She says it's an Aspidistra, and this particular example has quite the story to tell...

'When I was a very small child, my grandmother lived in London, and when we went to visit her, she would let me wipe down the leaves with a damp cloth, and it was her pride and joy. She loved the plant so much, It lived in the corner,' Jane says.

'She had lived through two World Wars and had lots of stories to tell that maybe she didn't want to share with other people. She told me that I could tell the plant anything I wanted to, about anything, and my secrets would be safe with it.'

Jane added that her grandmother talking to the plant was a form of therapy. 'Her husband was gassed and she lost her son in the war. When she died, the aspidistra come to live with us and so she lived on.'

And if you want to tend to an aspidistra at home, Jane has some advice:

'They're the easiest plants to grow, just don't put them in the sun, put them in the shade and talk to them. I know it sounds crazy and people have said it in the past, but it's part of the family. Don't overwater it, ignore it if you want to sometimes. It will forgive you. They're just very easy.'

Wear proper shoes, don't be afraid of the rain and stick around for the sell off: A beginner's guide to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show

We're expecting a lot of new faces at RHS Chelsea this year, as gardening gets more and more popular. Are you visiting the Royal Hospital for the first time this year? If yes, and you're worried about what to do when you get there, we've put together a little 'first-time guide' for you with the help of Chelsea supremo James Alexander-Sinclair, so you can blend in among those who have been going for years and make the most of your day (or days).

'I have been coming to the show for more years than I care to remember in many different guises,' says James. 'My first visit was just as the show closed on a Friday afternoon (opening hours have since been extended to Saturday) and I arrived with a wheelbarrow on a hunt for cheap plants. Since then, I have designed a couple of gardens, helped people plant things, worked as a gardens judge (for the past 20 years), led numerous tours and guided the Royal Family around the show ground.'

'By which I mean to say that I know the show pretty well and have experienced it in many ways and in every weather condition from insufferably hot to chilling rain. Many of you will be going for the first time, so here is my eight point plan to guide you through it'

1. Wear sensible shoes

I know this is not terribly horticultural, but pavements are hard and you are walking a long way. You are also in a crowd, so run the distinct risk of having someone tread on your toes.

2. Take a friend

A flower show is much more enjoyable in company. You need someone to disagree with or to draw your attention to something unmissable. For years (before I started judging and stuff), I went with a friend of mine and we would stand in front of each garden and decide which element we would take out that would improve the garden. Simplicity in garden design is always important so it was never a question of ‘what would you add to this garden’, but always about what you would take away. It also gives you someone with whom to share the terrifying cost of a jug of Pimms.

3. Patience

This is not only a virtue, but a Chelsea essential. Unless you are lucky enough to get a pass for after hours or (even better) the very early morning, you are not going to get much alone time! Every garden will be surrounded by people four or five ranks deep. There is no point grumbling or pushing and shoving. Wait a bit and slowly shuffle forwards. The people in front of you will move away and you will get the views you need. Slow and steady is the secret.

4. Exploit the weather

Occasionally it rains during the show. This is not necessarily all bad if you are well prepared. When it does rain a lot of the crowds will take refuge in the Great Pavilion: if you have an umbrella and a decent pair of shoes (see point one) then this is your moment to get a closer look at the gardens.

5. Have a plan, but be prepared to stray from it

There will be a shedload of publicity leading up to the show drawing your attention to particular gardens, to rare plants, to new products and things you MUST NOT miss. Check out the social media accounts of the designers (and the RHS) and make a note of anything particularly exciting. This year we have already seen tantalising snippets of the enormous head that Sarah Eberle (the only person to have won a Gold Medal in every available category at the show) has in her garden for the CPRE, of Arit Anderson's garden for Parkinson's UK, and of the garden Francis Tophill has designed for the RHS with the aid of The King, Sir David Beckham and Alan Titchmarsh.

6. Medals — do they matter?

To most people, not a lot, but they are really important to the people who have made the gardens or grown the plants, and they definitely add a frisson of extra excitement. We start judging on the Saturday before the show opens and it is a long and rigorous process. The main problem is that different people like different things so we have concocted a way in which everything is judged objectively. Most of the medals are given out at around 8am on the Tuesday so, if you want to see it happen live, then you need to be a member of the RHS and an early bird. The announcement of the Best in Show award is usually around 11am. The People's Choice award is revealed towards the end of the week.

7. Allow lots of time

Don't get so carried away with the joys of the Great Pavilion or Main Avenue that you miss the Houseplant Studios or (the most popular category in recent years) the Container and Balcony Gardens. And there are a lot of shopping opportunities, from massive treehouses costing thousands of pounds, to simple packets of seeds.

8. Stick around for the sell off

A bell will be rung (by either a celebrity or a Chelsea pensioner) at the end of the day on Saturday. This signals the end of the show and the sell off. This is your chance to get hold of some cheap plants. Bear in mind, however, that they will have had a hard couple of weeks at the Show and will need a bit of tender loving care to get them back into shape. Take them home, plant them quickly and look after them well and you will always have a tangible souvenir of a very special day.

Chelsea in Three: Bella Fulford

The work that goes on to produce RHS Chelsea is unfathomable, so we must always remember those who have spent many early mornings and late nights putting everything together. One such member of the team is our own Editorial Assistant Bella Fulford, who briefly stopped working on the stand she helped realise and to reveal her thoughts on gnomes, wildflowers and flowers. Will she also choose a peony? Probably!

Toby has found a small train. He is delighted by this, as he should be. The train can be found on the stand of Greg Anderson, the founder of Leafy Lytham, which is based at Grade I-listed Lytham Hall in Lancashire.

A plaque on the stand reveals the inspiration behind the train. 'Greg played with his train set with his grandfather who taught him to garden. This little scene is inspired by many happy moments in Gran and Grandad's garden playing with trains among the cottage garden flowers.'

Do you know how many varieties of daffodils there are? If you guessed 'almost 32,000', then well done to you. I always assumed that there was just 'daffodil'. Maybe that's why I've been left at the office to do the blogging.

Anyway, here are some varieties from the fourth-generation family business known as Taylors Bulbs, which has been going since 1919. The Tullybeg variety is a personal favourite of Rosie Paterson, as they flower into May.

I have just eaten a giant bowl of pasta in about 15 minutes, so there's every chance the inevitable heartburn I am about to experience might slow down my posting, but I shall do my best to persevere

Take a look: The RHS and The King's Foundation Curious Garden

After all the excitement of the morning, and my hastily eaten lunch, it's time to have a look at some of our favourite gardens on show this year. First up, The RHS and The King's Foundation Curious Garden, designed by Frances Tophill (whomst was holding a gnome alongside Alan Titchmarsh earlier this morning).

This garden 'explores and celebrates the diverse nature of plants and all the ways they enrich our lives and our industries', and intends to inspire the next generation of planters and gardeners, who grow for 'health, happiness and the environment'. The just-announced Sir David Beckham rose is one of the key plants, alongside delphiniums, wheat, Coreopsis tinctoria, pistachio and mulberry.

At the heart of the garden is the oak framed 'museum of garden curiosities', where fabrics and cordage are woven from plants, while dyes and pigments are extracted from plants. After the show, the garden will be transplanted to a college for young adults, where the dye garden plants will be used by fashion students and the vegetables and herbs by catering students.

Grow your own Range Rover

Rosie Paterson reports from the Range Rover Cloister, where something is growing within the bushes. Is it... an electric Range Rover? Apparently so. The car will be available this year and Range Rover's feature garden is inspired by cloistered architecture, water features (keep those away from any charging plugs), pollinator-friendly planting and sculptural hornbeam columns. Talk about creating a buzz! I'll show myself out.

An Edwardian revival with a swinging seat

Giles Kime, Interiors Editor, gets in touch to praise the stand at ODD, who make swinging seats. They're 'a thing', he says, and notes they are a good way of getting colour outside. They also feature very deep, decorative fringing, notes our man in Havana*

*SW3

What to eat at RHS Chelsea: The Lobster Roll – 'not overly sauced'

Some might say the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is about flowers and gardens and implements, but to some of the team, it is also about food. As such, we will try and review the best bites to eat while at the show, because we here at Country Life yearn for you to have the finest things in life, at all times, in all places.

One of the staples is the lobster roll. Rosie Paterson reports thusly: 'We really liked the amount of lobster, the warm bun and not overly sauced. It was presented beautifully with edible flowers on top.'

Country Life score: 8/10

We've had lots of visitors to the stand today, which has been a delight. James Martin, Clare Balding, Shirley Ballas and Monty Don have all stopped by to sign the visitors book.

Do come say hello at some point this week!

Water, water everywhere

Rosie Paterson mentioned earlier on her first foray around the show that there's plenty of calm running water about. We've stitched together some footage from the Show Gardens to show you what she means. Have a soothing watch below.

Take a look: Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa

Defending 'Best in Show' winner Kazuyuki Ishihara returns, alongside Paul Noritaka Tange, to present the Tokonoma Garden — Sanumaya no Niwa. The garden aims to revive the tradition of viewing a beautiful landscape from the tokonoma, a raised alcove that was once central to life in Japan, serving as a place where family meals, conversations and hospitality convened while enjoying view of a garden beyond.

A mixture of stone, water, moss and seasonal plants will aim to create a feeling of contemplation, harmony and connection and takes inspiration from the Ishihara's childhood memories of the Sanumaya draper store, where his family gathered.

'Chelsea is the ultimate stage to share the culture of Japanese gardens with the world, offering invaluable opportunities to connect with visitors, media, and fellow designers,' says Ishihara, who was once dubbed the 'Green Magician' by Elizabeth II. 'This year, I decided to take part to present a new proposal — the Tokonoma Garden, inspired by the historic "Sanumaya Kimono Shop," reinterpreting a traditional space for the modern age.'

Rosie has found some rusty cows. Observe.

These 'Highland coo' sculptures are the creation of Kev Paxton and Cat Stops, otherwise known as ArtFe. They combine centuries-old blacksmithing techniques with salvaged steel to create 'something bold and unapologetic', in this case a cow with a traffic cone on its head.

Chelsea in Three: Florence Allen

She's been busy scurrying around the show capturing pictures and video for your social medias, but she's found a minute to stop and turn the camera on herself. Here's our Social Media Editor Florence Allen on gnomes, wildflowers, lawns and flowers.

'It smells absolutely delicious': Country Life Editor Mark Hedges' five favourite things from RHS Chelsea 2026

Mark Hedges, the supreme leader of all things Country Life, has spent the day exploring the grounds at RHS Chelsea as well as meeting and greeting guests on the stand. He's very kindly let me know the five things that have really impressed him this year.

1) The Show Gardens

I think one of the first things that struck me, because what you do as soon as you get here is you look at the show gardens, and they're all wonderful. But when heading down the hill rather than up the hill, on the left, you finally come to the Japanese garden.

And there's a little piece of water there that is so tranquil and so reflective, it will have to be one of my favourite things. Anyone who knows me, knows I love fishing, so anything to do with water is always fascinating.

I think the show gardens are particularly strong this year. It would be unfair to pick out another one other than to say that they are particularly magical. They are, they're very good.

2) The orchids of Orchid Conservation Chelsea

My second thing that I was very struck by was the orchid stand, which has already triumphed this morning and won a set of prizes for an orchid that was important to Confucius.

So that is many thousands of years, but they brought it back together. It is all part of Chinese culture and it's amazing to think that's something that Confucius saw and also went on to inspire Coco Chanel when she was producing Chanel Number 5, is here at Chelsea, and they have orchids that have never been seen before in Europe here as well.

3) The daffodils

The third thing that struck me is the humble daffodil.

There is a stand, it's here almost every year and I've been coming for 21 years. When you see lots of different daffodils altogether you're reminded of how pleasing daffodils are.

I used to not like daffodils, but now as you get older, spring and the change of the season becomes more important, and I will be investing in a whole new set of daffodils for home.

4) The food

The 4th thing that I think is so much better this year is the food. There is far more variety of of food stands than there were of a much better class than they have had.

And what I mean by class is that there's much more choice. There is José Pizarro, there is also Ottolenghi, there is far more far more interesting things to eat than there has been before.

And that can only be a good thing because you're here for a whole day.

5) The Garden Lover's Library by Country Life

Finally, the thing that I'm actually most proud of is our own, the Country Life stand, which George Saumarez Smith has put together. It is extraordinarily beautiful. I know how much time, effort and work has gone into doing it. It is a delightful space that anyone would wish to have in their own home.

It's surrounded, it is cosy, it is deliberately not set out that every plant is perfect because they represent, what is I suppose is an ideal, rather than perfection. Where there are lots of plants, all in perfect bloom, that's not real. So I think our stand is very, very special and it smells absolutely delicious.

It has lots and lots of books that have been collected especially especially for the bookshelf and also being a geologist, the stone, which is all British and Irish stone is truly fantastic.

The fireplace is made out of a sort of limestone marble from the Chatsworth estate, full of fossils, especially crinoids, and is a geologist's dream. Do come and see it, it's fantastic.

What to eat at RHS Chelsea: Fish and Chips – 'the perfect posh fry'

Mark Hedges mentioned how good the food is at the Chelsea Flower Show this year, so we'll round out the day with another instalment of What to eat at RHS Chelsea: fish and chips edition. Our in-house gastronome Rosie Paterson has this to say.

'Very generously sized portion, with crisp batter and excellently cooked fish. It's not dry, it's moist and flaky. My only issue is that the fish doesn't have the most amount of flavour. The fries are the perfect posh fry and we love the lemony mushy peas.'

Country Life score: 7/10

Goodbye for the day

That's enough RHS Chelsea for me today.

To those that have been following along, thank you so much, and the good news for you is that I'll be back in the content mines at 8am sharp tomorrow morning, with lots of videos of celebrities considering gnomes, more food reviews, more Show Gardens, the judging results, other things to do in SW3 and plenty of plants.

Have a great evening!

The sun appeared in Belfast yesterday. First warmth of Spring and all the men wore shorts. Belfast men wear shorts year round, but yesterday was special. Yesterday, the shorts served an actual purpose. I don’t wear shorts — never had the legs for them — so I enjoyed the sunshine in my own way. I walked up to the allotments, just for a peek through the gates.

There’s a romance to allotments. A purple Metroland fancy, Betjeman style. I think they are best appreciated on summer afternoons, on weekdays, in that pause between lunch and the schools letting out. You can peer through the chain link fence, over buddleia and rusting nettles. Grey sheds, spaced like old men in post office queues. Hosepipes bleaching in the sun. Files of potatoes, earthed up by the book, and tomatoes in sweaty little greenhouses. That one plot gone to couch grass, indicating sudden death or promotion at work.

I put my name down for an allotment three years ago. The way things are, I’ll be extremely lucky to get my hands dirty this decade. Belfast has 281 plots spread over seven sites. It isn’t much for a population of 350,000, and demand is building all the time. Last year, the city council produced a report on allotment provision. As of March 2025, there were 964 people waiting for a plot.

‘Our current waiting list is over a thousand people, and that’s really telling in its own way,’ says Councillor Ruth Brooks, deputy chair of Belfast City Council’s People and Communities Committee. The attractions are obvious: ‘The growing and nourishing of things, learning from what you’ve done, how you could potentially do it better. It’s fascinating — and very, very good for people’s mental health.’

In an ideal world, new allotments would be opening up on every scrap of brownfield the city has to offer. Sadly, reality intrudes. People need places to live, and new housing naturally takes priority in a city where rent prices have gone up by 53% in the past 5 years. For now, the council has opened community gardens and raised money to green the city’s alleyways. But it isn’t quite like having your own plot, the sense of stewardship and commitment that comes from working the same patch of earth year after year.

The terraced Victorian houses that form a large part of Belfast’s housing stock don’t generally have back gardens. Outside space is often limited to a small yard. As Cllr Brooks puts it, ‘you’ve usually just enough room to put two bins in and open the back gate’. I’m lucky enough to have space for a tiny bench next to my bins. But I have to keep my legs tucked in, and there’s no chance of serious veg growing. For the moment, I’ve acquired the sad habit of ordering seed catalogues and leafing through them during off moments — waiting for the kettle to boil, or on the loo.

No one really knows why so many people now want an allotment. The pandemic must have something to do with it. And I wonder if there’s a broader realisation that all the stuff that’s supposed to entertain us these days is really incredibly boring. Better to go outside and have a companionably gloomy chat about onion fly.

Mike Farrell, chairman of The National Allotment Society, has seen great changes. Allotments are no longer the preserve of ‘old fuddy-duddies of a certain type.’ That pleases him. He has his own theories about growing. It’s in our DNA, what we’re designed to do. It helps us to make sense of things.

The passage of time is a big one. When I suggest that allotments are actually clocks, Farrell agrees enthusiastically. He’d like to see allotments used to educate young children. All of life is there, after all. There’s no better place to learn about forward planning, commitment and adaptability, or how to accept failure. Allotments teach resilience.

I was struck, when reading Belfast City Council’s allotment report, by the mention of ‘pressures upon food security.’ Resilience seems increasingly important in this area, too. Farrell calmly observes that there have been periods of our recent history when we have had to grow our own food for reasons beyond satisfaction and taste. You’re not going to feed a family from an allotment alone, but you can ensure a supply of fresh fruit and vegetables that don’t have to cross troubled waters to reach your plate.

Anyway, it’s the waiting game for me. Apparently more than 200 people have their names down for a plot at my local allotment site. That’s all right — patience is a horticultural virtue. And there are small projects I could be getting on with. I might replace my bench with a tub of potatoes this summer. A dash of green will show the bins off to their best advantage.

If variety is the spice of life, then the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show promises to be a richly varied show, this year sponsored for the first time by Range Rover. The gardens, as always, are far-reaching in their ambitions and presentation. Some have been brought from, or inspired by, locations across the world; others celebrate our homegrown traditions, drawing upon historical references and a very English passion for horticulture.

Nowhere is the comfort of familiar things more winningly presented than in The RHS and The King’s Foundation Curious Garden, by Frances Tophill. In essence, it is a charming English cottage garden with a centrepiece open-sided, oak-frame building, around which are productive raised beds, edged with wattle hurdles. Billed as an educational exhibit, its beds nurture abundant homegrown vegetables, flowers for cutting, herbs, dyer’s plants, and a summer bonanza of herbaceous blooms (including The King’s favourite blue delphiniums).

A traditional beehive, teepees of climbing flowers, fruit bushes and some quirky topiaries support its rustic theme. This charming and horticulturally intensive garden could well be the show’s top crowd pleaser. The point of its beautifully crafted oak hut is to display worthwhile har-vests gleaned from the homestead garden, variously dried, pickled and bottled.

A royal connection continues in The Boodles Garden, by Catherine MacDonald, inspired by key features within the Historic Royal Palaces. For example, a rill around its central flagstoned and crazy-paved courtyard hints at the shape of the (now dry) moat at the Tower of London; a ceiling in Queen Charlotte’s rustic Cottage within the botanical gardens at Kew inspired the latticed design of a central pavilion. This pretty garden features flowers in gemstone colours, such as regal purple and dark ruby in Astrantia major ‘Claret’, burgundy-petalled ‘Buckeye Belle’ peonies and darkest-violet Iris ‘Superstition’.

Plentiful flowers in both rich and pastel colours enhance The Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent no More’ display, by Darren Hawkes. Its sculptural walls and alcoves are in peachy tones, reminiscent of rendered adobe. Curvaceous and subtly feminine, the walls are prettily draped in roses and vines. This year has not delivered the kindest start to spring for delicate iris blooms (even when the sun has shone, it has often been paired with a cold north wind), but look out for the ravishing Iris ‘Wondrous’, a peaches-and-cream charmer.

Warm-tinted elevations of a wilder kind feature in The Project Giving Back Garden, by James Basson. It focuses on a series of gouged-out, golden-orange ‘cliffs’ set within a forest of Scots pine trees (Pinus sylvestris), echoing an ancient, quarried landscape around Roussillon in southern France. This area has been mined since prehistoric times for the red and golden ochre pigments locked in its hills; the iron oxides give local villages their characteristic warm colours.

Basson has pushed the boundaries of garden versus wild landscape in previous shows and executes his wildernesses with panache and deft plantsmanship. Expect the ambience of the South, with aromas of pine, cistus, heather and thyme.

Is 2026 the year of the pine tree? The Eden Project Bring Me Sunshine Garden features Austrian or black pines (Pinus nigra) to provide structure and scale across its evocation of a coastal garden. Its moated ‘open-air classroom’ in the garden’s heart is roofed with a shell-shaped canopy, with paths fanning out into different parts of the garden, among grasses, meadow flowers and edibles, such as sea kale, samphire and artichokes. It is a sample, in miniature, of the Eden Project’s proposed satellite garden in Morecambe, Lancashire, due to open in 2028.

Specimen Scots pines lend a different feel to the Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space Garden by Angus Thompson, pictured at the top of the page. Amid a show with much curvaceousness, this is one of the few rectilinear gardens. Mr Thompson draws upon the Japanese concept of yohaku no bi (the beauty of empty space), ‘a design philosophy that values restraint and uncluttering, reducing visual noise and allowing both mind and body to rest,’ he says.

The empty space is a large, cantilevered platform in the garden’s heart, appearing to float above water. Its gnarled pines are placed to anchor the garden amid soft, woodland-edge planting in a predominantly soothing green and white palette.

Compare and contrast it with Tokonama Garden — Sanumaya no Niwa, which delivers a different flavour of Japanese gardening, from Kazuyuki Ishihara and Paul Noritaka Tange. Crowded with colour and incident, yet mesmerising and contemplative in their refined detail, Mr Ishihara’s gardens have charmed showgoers for more than 20 years with their compositions of serene waterscapes, neat little buildings and layered emerald, lime and copper leaves of acers.

His pine trees differ greatly from all others at the show, being of the discreet, bonsai kind, crouching at the waterside among the immaculately positioned rocks and vivid green moss.

Inspiration from East Asia continues, in the planting of The Tate Britain Garden, by Tom Stuart-Smith. It showcases part of the new Clore Garden at Tate Britain on London’s Millbank, due to open later this year. Its serpentine pathway incorporates an inlaid water feature including bronze dishes and lights, with water flowing along thin rills.

The heart of the garden displays Barbara Hepworth’s Bicentric Form (1949), plucked from Tate’s collection for the duration of the show. Planting is drawn from Asian woodland species, including Schefflera shweliensis, from the Himalayas, and Japanese sago palm Cycas revoluta, as well as fruiting trees, such as figs, pineapple guava and pomegranates.

Still with thoughts from abroad, the Indian Pacific epic train ride across Australia has inspired Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth, by Max Parker-Smith. Its central garden building is modelled on a railway carriage, facing ‘the wild Western Australian outback’ on one side, with tiered sand beds and native plants.

The other side suggests the city of Adelaide, its national-park status and cooling water among much greenery. Planting throughout focuses on native species including gnarled eucalyptus trees and bright flowers, particularly reds, from callistemons, grevilleas, hakea and the felty fingers of kangaroo paw, Anigozanthos.

At home and away, there is something for everyone at Chelsea — including Country Life’s elegant stand. Do drop by to say ‘hello’.

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Close your eyes and conjure up an image of what you imagine to be the perfect English flower show. The day is fine and fair, a thing of blue skies and birdsong (forgive my lapse into P. G. Wodehouse prose). There are marquees bursting with fragrant blooms and children dancing around a maypole; there is tea and cake aplenty on the grassy meadow where the egg-and-spoon race is in full swing.

One tent, set apart from the rest, houses an array of silver cups and salvers to be awarded at the end of the day for potatoes or sweet peas, roses or the straightest runner bean. Through the translucent canvas of a large marquee, the sunbeams glint upon trestle tables devoted to exhibits from children groaning under the weight of miniature gardens and tiny flower arrangements, as another boasts serried ranks of jam-oozing Victoria sponges and cream-topped sherry trifles.

Children from local schools tip out bags of luscious compost and weigh the potatoes that have been nurtured within their confines to see who has grown the heaviest crop, as others, more sparingly clad, demonstrate the skills and artistry they have absorbed at the local ballet school.

Among this happy throng of mums and dads, grandparents and offspring of all ages meanders a member of the Royal Family, smiling and saying ‘hello', offering encouragement and admiring the display gardens constructed for the day in the hope of capturing the interest of a future client and winning a prize to boot.

Well, this dream flower show is, in fact, a reality. It is the Royal Windsor Flower Show, organised by the Royal Windsor Rose and Horticultural Society and held, each June — for one day only — on the lawns around the York Club in Windsor Great Park. This year it will take place on June 6 and, if previous years are anything to go by, it will be a day of joyful celebration accompanied by glorious weather. (Not guaranteed, but fervently hoped for.)

The King is the society's Royal Patron and I count myself lucky to be its honorary president. It is my favourite horticultural show of the year. Why? Because it embodies all those things that one remembers from childhood: families coming together and celebrating gardens and gardening, teas on the lawn, talks in a tent, good humour, good food and an overwhelming sense of joie de vivre — a French term, but one that perfectly describes an intrinsically English event.

You can buy your ticket in advance. (Tickets are available at the gate on the day, but numbers are restricted, so play safe and book early.) London theatre tickets nowadays can cost up to £300. For that you'll get about three hours of enjoyment. At the Royal Windsor Flower Show, you'll be entertained from 10am until 6pm. The cost? For an ‘Early Bird' adult ticket it's £17. Children: £4.50. A snip.

This year's theme is ‘Rooted in Nature' — inspired by The King's book Harmony. It ‘celebrates the balance between people, plants and the planet, reminding us that the true sustainability begins with connection — the soil beneath our feet, the communities we nurture and the living world that sustains us'.

Not that such messages are ever promulgated with a heavy hand at this most glorious of flower shows. It remains, in essence, a joyful celebration — and a place to spend rather more than you had bargained for buying plants from some of the country's leading nurserymen, or from the stand of The Royal Gardens Windsor, whose offerings all come with a very fetching label bearing a crest with which to impress your neighbours.

Last year, The King made an appearance, touring the show and talking to both exhibitors and visitors to everyone's surprise and delight. This year, The Duchess of Edinburgh has agreed to design a garden. Now that will be interesting…

Numbers are restricted, so everyone can enjoy themselves without elbowing their way through the madding crowd. It is a day in the year to which I look forward with joyful anticipation. Britain at its best. Gardeners at their best. Small it may be, but when it comes to charm, good humour and spirit, I rank the Royal Windsor Flower Show as my all-time favourite.

More details and tickets for The Royal Windsor Flower Show are available via their website.

'Chatsworth: The gardens and the people who made them' by Alan Titchmarsh is out now (Ebury, £35).

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

The main source of vanilla globally, the world’s smallest waterlily and several species of magnolia could disappear, together with their evolutionary history, say scientists who have carried out the first worldwide study of extinction risk, linked to the tree of life, among flowering plants. They also estimate that, if current rates of loss continue, more than one-fifth (21.2%) of the evolutionary history of flowering plants worldwide will be lost.

During this global assessment, scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and international collaborators identified 9,945 Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species, which is about 3% of all known flowering plant species.

These included the increasingly rare thick-stemmed Vanilla planifolia, an orchid that grows in the tropical forests of Mexico and Central and northern South America; the diminutive Nymphaea thermarum, also known as miniature Rwandan water lily, that has fallen victim to over-exploitation; Medusagyne oppositifolia, the jellyfish tree, which grows on the island of Mahé in the Seychelles; and the flowering plant Magnolia sinica, which is native to the south-east Yunnan Province in China.

Hondurodendron urceolatum, a dioecious tree found across a single mountain range in the Parque Nacional El Cusuco in Honduras, topped the EDGE list. The scientists ranked all 335,497 flowering plant species using molecular data, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and computer modelling, in what is the largest conservation prioritisation study ever carried out.

With some species more evolutionarily distinctive than others because they have fewer close relatives on the tree of life — such as Ginkgo biloba, the maidenhair tree, which is the only known descendant of an ancient lineage dating back more than 300 million years — researchers had needed a clearer roadmap to protect those at-risk plants.

The impressive-looking Amorphophallus titanum is also a species identified by the EDGE assessments due to its risk of extinction.

‘By applying the EDGE approach to flowering plants, we are better able to protect our planet’s rich, bustling ecosystems that have taken billions of years to develop,’ explains the study’s co-lead Dr Rikki Gumbs, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology at ZSL, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary.

Kew’s new exhibition of EDGE species, including the critically endangered blue amaryllis or empress of Brazil (Worsleya procera) and the Albany pitcher plant (Cephalotus follicularis) from Western Australia, opens on May 20.

This feature first appeared in the May 13, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Every spring, as the first shoots push through the soil and the birds tune up for the dawn chorus, I’m reminded of nature’s remarkable ability to bounce back — if we give it the smallest opportunity. There’s a particular magic in those early moments: the scent of damp earth, the hum of the first bees, and the quiet promise contained in new growth.

Gardeners across the UK already do so much to care for nature, often instinctively — from creating welcoming spaces for wildlife to nurturing healthy soils and planting for pollinators.

People often ask me what more they can do that genuinely makes a difference. Many expect a complicated answer involving expertise, money or a sizeable garden. But the reassuring truth is far simpler. Every garden, whatever its size, has untapped potential. And sometimes what seem like small actions, can be extraordinarily powerful.

As the new BBC One series Secret Garden shows, purposeful actions can make a meaningful difference. And when you consider the collective power of the UK’s gardens — almost a million hectares of growing space — the potential becomes extraordinary.

This vast mosaic of courtyards, terraces, balconies, allotments and lawns has the power to unlock a much-needed boost for nature. But if each of us added just one more action, the impact could scale up incredibly quickly.

Across National Trust gardens, I’m privileged to see some of the country’s most inspiring landscapes. Yet the places that stay with me aren’t always the grandest. The dead hedges at Wray Castle, Cumbria and the new mingled borders at Peckover, Cambridgeshire — designed to minimise environmental impact and encourage biodiversity — show just how quickly nature can respond when given the chance.

I’m passionate about slow gardening — a thoughtful, ecological approach to gardening that works with nature. Sometimes, this kind of gardening is presented in a negative light, focusing on what gardeners might ‘lose’. In fact, we, and nature, have so much to gain if we recast ourselves as thoughtful garden ‘stewards’ who think long-term and prioritise sustainability.

So, what might this look like? Swapping out bedding plants for longer-lived plants provides good sources of nectar, pollen, seeds or fruits, to feed a wide variety of wildlife, while still giving us joy. Left in the ground rather than dug up, their roots nurture the soil too. Create a pond and you’ll be surprised how quickly it thrives; even a small water body will add life to your outdoor space. Putting up a bird box in a sheltered corner can offer declining birds like house sparrows and starlings a safe haven during breeding season. Small actions really can make a difference.

Sometimes, what you don’t do can be just as important. Instead of reaching for a chemical bug spray, wait a day or two for hungry bluetits and their young to take care of those aphids for you. Instead of laying artificial grass, take pleasure from discovering more about the life a diverse lawn can support, like ground-nesting bees. Rather than buying in soil improvers, make your own compost, and let leaves and prunings break down in-situ, to underpin garden health naturally. And rather than clearing everything away to the compost heap or the council waste bin, leaving a log pile or patch of long grass creates valuable habitat for beetles, fungi and many other species.

You don’t need to overhaul your garden or do everything at once. Often, we do tasks out of habit or routine — but taking a step back can help us identify simple, but powerful, ways to make a difference for the better.

Across National Trust gardens, we’ve seen wildlife respond quickly when small changes are made. Add deadwood and beetles reappear. Create a pond and amphibians follow. Leave a corner wild and all sorts of insects come back within months.

And in nurturing these spaces, we benefit too. Gardening calms the mind, lifts the spirit and roots us — quite literally — to the ground beneath our feet.

In the face of a nature crisis, it’s easy to feel powerless. But we are a nation of gardeners, and that gives us real collective strength. If even a fraction of us took an action to help nature, the impact across millions would be profound — making our outdoor spaces not only beautiful, but powerful allies in helping nature recover.

For months, I have been staring out of the window at a new flowerbed wondering what to plant in it. Although it is south-facing, there are some complications: a sunken terrace to the north, slightly sloping ground and, most importantly, a lot of rain in winter (I live in Somerset). The border is hardly a grand projet, but it has reduced me to a state of petrification.

In search of inspiration, I turned to AI for help. The design apps one can peer at over a paywall seem geared towards American plants, planting zones and tastes (which are not mine) and you would have to have a considerable design and horticultural knowhow to get anything above the generic out of them.

Instead, I went to the standard accessible chat tools, putting in as many specifications (weather, orientation, situation — a frost pocket — soil condition) as I could think of into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot to see what they could come up with. Having uploaded photographs of said flowerbed, as if I were joining a dating site, I asked them all to give me planting plans and some sort of visual rendition.

Although they were entertaining to use (Claude was especially polite and encouraging), I had to feed in endless tweaks and corrections — ‘add more spring bulbs/autumn colour/wildlife-friendly plants’, ‘consider the shade cast by the tall plants’, ‘that plant is too tender to survive’ and so on — which gave the lie to there being any underlying horticultural intelligence at play.

To give them their due, they did apologise if I spotted something amiss and adjusted their plan accordingly. All this refining took me quite a lot of time and thought, however.

It was when it came to suggesting the plants that matters came to a head. In response to my request for a yellow/pink/orange palette, nearly all came up with the same plants. Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’, Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, gaura and salvias appeared frequently with wildly varying recommendations on how many I needed. If I had followed some of the advice, the bed would have ended up as packed as a Chelsea show garden from day one: good for immediate effect, but not realistic. It was up to me to question how much plants would spread and how the bed would look in five years’ time.

When I pushed the bots to be more imaginative, they did suggest some interesting varieties, but not all were suitable (again, more time was required double-checking viability). I kept thinking I could have saved myself a lot of time by consulting books in the first place.

Some sites did dive more deeply, coming up with step-by-step action plans, a list of nearby nurseries and even what to divide in, say, three years’ time. Most disappointing, however, was that not one site could really understand the photographs I had uploaded. As a result, their visual realisations were at best — and here I am being extremely generous — pretty, but vague. At worst, they presented me with a grotesque mixture of Frankenstein plants that no nursery has ever nurtured. I exaggerate not.

The designer Lottie Delamain, whose new book Gardens That Can Change the World is to be published soon, lives conveniently nearby and, although my garden is hardly going to echo her examples, she kindly came to look at my results. ‘It’s not very nuanced,’ she pronounced, immediately observing that all the programmes had come up with the same palette of plants because, clearly, they’re still working from quite a small pool of information. ‘The big thing is that they are simply not understanding that you’re in the bottom of a valley, which you immediately see when you walk in.’

Unforgivably, they had failed to spot the most obvious issues. ‘A designer would clock that all the Mediterranean plants on their lists are going to have very wet feet in winter’ — and consequently rot and die. Nor had any of them taken note of the wider ecological benefits of a good planting plan. ‘They’re not talking about creating structural layers for different habitat types.’ It was an elegant reminder of the irreplaceable human ability to read a site — not as a list of conditions, but as a story: where the wind comes from, where the water gathers, which view needs softening and which should be revealed.

Last time I spoke to the designer Andy Sturgeon, he had been full of doom and gloom about AI taking over and how he would be out of a job. I gave him a call to see if he had enrolled on a plumbing course and found him considerably more cheerful.

‘Clients are simply not interested in using some AI bot to turn out a garden,' he said. 'They don’t want that, which is a good thing.’

Having the deep knowledge of how plants work together beautifully in a particular place is what has led Mr Sturgeon to three Best in Shows at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and a successful career as one of the country’s top designers.

He does, however, find himself using AI as an ‘ideas generator’. It can be quite useful: ‘When you look at a blank page and think “what am I going to put here?”, every plant name immediately disappears from your head. You could say, for example, “give me a list of shade-tolerant plants” simply to get you started.’

At the rate of development of machine learning, it is not inconceivable that, one day, AI will be able to take everything seen and unseen in the garden into account. For now, however, I think I need the four-dimensional skills and forethought of the garden designer, who is mindful of weather, aspect, soil, seasons, nutritional needs and complementary strengths in choosing every plant to put in the ground.

Gardening still needs someone who understands that even the most formal of gardens is a living thing, which will change with time, and, most importantly, someone with those indefinable, unlearnable qualities of taste and vision.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on April 22, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

At the furthest end of the 320 acres of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew — beyond the glasshouses and even the arboretum — is a bluebell wood. This traditionally managed, historic woodland has a genuinely rural atmosphere that becomes quite magical during the great sensory crescendo that is a bluebell wood in full bloom.

The wood is part of a not particularly well-known 37-acre natural area that also includes meadows and wetland. Its unassuming nature is due to an unlikely conservationist — Queen Victoria. Like her forebears, she was a great supporter of the gardens and, as her grandparents, George III and Queen Charlotte, were, she was particularly charmed by the informal ‘wilderness’ along the River Thames from Kew Palace.

Rarely used by the Royal Family after Queen Charlotte’s death, the area was left in a somewhat natural state, with ivy and bramble allowed to romp, and fallen trees abandoned in the undergrowth. For her Diamond Jubilee, Victoria decided to give the royal wilderness to the nation with one proviso, ‘that this unique spot may be preserved in its present beautiful and natural condition’.

Attached to Kew’s natural area is the garden around Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, a rustic building that she had made with half-timbered exterior walls and antique leaded windows.

Inside, there was no kitchen or bedroom, but enough space to prepare tea, with a tiny privy behind a baize door. The ‘picnic room’ was painted by her daughter Princess Elizabeth to resemble the inside of a bower, its parabolic ceiling criss-crossed with a trompe-l’oeil bamboo trellis, adorned with nasturtium and morning glory. Outside, a menagerie of exotic animals kept the Royal Family amused until the kangaroos became too numerous. The garden was then planted with Rhododendron ponticum, introduced into England in 1763.

There are many interpretations of how to manage a landscape in a natural condition and one of them is to do nothing. By 2024, the cottage’s garden featured mainly 20ft rhododendrons, with a supporting chorus of bramble. Although the cottage was restored by Historic Royal Palaces in 2021, it remained mainly hidden from view when Kew’s arboretum team, led by Valerie Boujard, began its own restoration a couple of years ago.

Ms Boujard has the challenging remit of drawing in visitors without putting in obvious new attractions, unless one counts native shrubs, such as elder, serviceberry and spindle, in this category. One of the first jobs was to tackle the Rhododendron ponticum. Much has gone, but an island of the plant, cut to waist height, has been left for old times’ sake, and a few full-height remnants are allowed to express themselves further back.

Nothing has gone to waste: their twisted stems are useful in a sculptural woodpile in the ‘habitat bed’. Another survivor is a rangy, unpruned Buxus sempervirens, contemporary to the 1772 cottage, which is a magnet for bees when in flower.

In choosing new plants for the cottage’s garden, the plan has been to select natives, ‘because we are neighbours with the natural area,’ explains Ms Boujard. An easy win was to add more Betula pendula to make a birch grove with a few old survivors. Seen through their pale stems, the cottage beckons, like the setting for a northern European folk tale. In April, the woodland-edge garden is awash with bluebells and more Hyacinthoides non-scripta, gathered from other areas, have been planted to form a bluebell ‘river’ in the cleared space. It’s an unrushed process, with foxgloves, campions and daffodils added by seed and the garden monitored for insect activity.

Kew’s scientific expertise is an advantage when it comes to interpreting a ‘natural’ land-scape for our times and the future. Adding more native trees involves some consideration; it is no good looking to old reliables such as English oak or beech because they are now struggling when spring is increasingly dry and summer is unusually hot. Kevin Martin, the head of tree collections, has been monitoring Quercus robur grown from acorns collected from as far east as Kazakhstan and south to the Caucasus where they grow in conditions that might be similar to ours in the future.

Ru Brookes is Kew’s natural habitats supervisor, not a job title that would have existed in Victoria’s time or even a decade ago. Of the natural area she says: ‘It’s a managed landscape, but we try to make it look as if there’s no human intervention.’ Preventing disease and keeping invasive plants in check is one goal; boosting native populations is another. A community of ageing black poplars has been given a future thanks to the efforts of Kew and other conservationists in Richmond upon Thames. Using cuttings from the genetically diverse wild population, the team is gradually replacing the old poplars on the riverbank.

Non-native trees, such as Turkey oak (Quercus cerris), are considered less useful to the ecosystems that have evolved in the British Isles with trees such as English and Welsh oak (Q. robur and Q. petraea). Instead of being removed, they are killed slowly, following the adage that a dead tree has more life in it than a living one. Bats, fungi and many rare inverte-brates thrive in wood that is decaying or dead. ‘Beetles need a lot of wood, buried timber, old root systems,’ says Ms Brookes, whose parti-cular focus is on stag beetles, which thrive in this area when generally they are endangered. The effect of senescence provides its own kind of theatre: ‘Seeing wildlife using the dead wood definitely helps people get on board.’

Non-native hardwoods are veteranised, in which members of the ‘tree gang’ rip off branches to mimic storm damage. Further options are ring barking to speed things up, and monolithing (particularly for beech) to create a branchless stem. Standing in the landscape like a lightning-struck specimen in a Caspar David Friedrich painting, the tortured trees attract owls and green woodpeckers are a common sight in the wood-fringed grasslands. The natural area’s bird population is ‘high density’ and 40 bird boxes have had their entrances reinforced to keep out parakeets. The grassy planting of a woodland-edge landscape is visually forgiving.

Although bluebells in gardens can be considered thuggish by gardeners, they are part of a succession of spring flowers that includes wild garlic, wild daffodils and snowdrops.

The latter are not native, but they are not invasive either and pro-vide early nectar. ‘A lot of insects are emerging earlier because temperatures are warmer, so we’re keen to have plants in flower anytime,’ notes Ms Brookes. After the spring pageant, unshowy wildflowers such as Stellaria media are valued in the emerging carpet of groundcover, which is essential for caterpillars.

Even brambles have their place and are cut back cyclically. ‘We encourage it because the flowers are good for pollinators and the fruit is good for pretty much everything.’

When the natural area was ceded by Queen Victoria for public enjoyment, it was described by the director of Kew as ‘a great sylvan beauty’. What would Victoria make of it now? Ms Brookes says: ‘I like to think she’d enjoy the way we’re keeping an equilibrium and trying to foster diversity in the natural environment.’ Choosing different words perhaps, it seems likely that she would concur.

Find out more about the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

This feature originally appeared in the April 22, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Many years ago, I was sitting next to a handsome, ambitious sort at a Boxing Day lunch. He turned to me with a charming smile and asked what my best Christmas present had been. A collection of large-scale OS maps, I said, beaming. His face fell; we didn’t hit it off. Goodness knows what he would have made of my best present this past year, a book called Slugs: Friend or Foe? by Hayley Jones.

I have often been plagued by guilt about these most monstrous of garden pests. Dr Jones advocates a zen-like, therapeutic approach: we have nothing to fear but fear itself, she insists. She encourages us to get to know, understand and sympathise with what is possibly the greatest garden demon.

Demons are disgusting looking and, there is no denying it, so are slugs. They developed from their less reviled relatives, snails, of the phylum Mollusca and the family gastropod, those who walk on their stomachs and operate at night to keep ‘moist’. Slugs, having shed their shells to squeeze themselves into damper reaches, took on something of the dark.

Their slime has phenomenal lubricant qualities, deterring predators with its foul taste and gumming up their mouth parts. Slugs are made up of strangely named elements; tubercles, mantles, saddles, breathing pore and tail. Not only do they walk on their stomachs, but their anus is by the mouth, where lies the ravenous radula, or tongue.

Dr Jones’s most convincing argument in favour of the slug is that only seven of the 45 species found in farms and gardens do any damage at all and 17 are our friends. Indeed, half the species we see are cleaner-uppers, scientifically known as ‘detritovores’ — they recycle dead matter, even consuming carrion waste and faeces by means of that cheese-grater radula. Many live on fungus. There are others whose diet still remains a mystery. On the upside, slugs are the favourite meal of birds, insects and mammals, holding a vital place in the garden ecosystem.

In an effort to cultivate affection, I dreamt up a bougie paint-colour chart based on their attributes: Breathing-pore Pink; Foot-fringe Orange; Dusky Subfusc; Pale Sole; Mucus Yellow. It’s not enough, however, to counter the rage on finding the tender dahlia shoots have been shredded.

To every slug there is a season and spring and autumn are their moments. Once it gets hot, gardens are safer. Now is the time to set up our barricades; beer traps and coffee grounds, copper tape and garlic in solution — all help to make you feel good. Like me, Dr Jones is unsure of the efficacy of any of the multifarious disruptors regularly suggested in gardening columns. She is certain of one thing, however: ‘always water in the morning’, because they are night creatures.

It also helps to direct sow as late as you can: the key egg-laying periods are March–April and September–October, which is when we need to employ all the humane methods available to lure the neonates away from our treasures. Grow sacrificial plants; encourage predators; let chickens in the garden; border the garden with wilder patches, a pond, untidy hedges and long grass. Wet places bring in the mega predators — toads, frogs and hedgehogs. Brown rats, badgers, shrews and moles do a good job, too. Humans are good at collecting slugs in buckets. Best of all are slow worms. Who guessed they hoovered up slugs with relish?

Probably the most abiding predators, however, are members of the beetle family, including those elusive, almost vanished, popstars of the night, glow-worms. Their larvae feed on slugs and snails, injecting a paralysing digestive juice through their bite. Ground beetles, especially the violet ground beetle, can put a stop to any slug’s revolting mucus production with a rapid nip to the back of the head.

Equally helpful are millipedes and earwigs, so it is important to keep all these garden workers happy. Birds, too, owls, fieldfares, rooks and blackbirds — we have a fine feathered militia here, which is crucial. It is all about food chains.

Devastation of a newly planted row of cabbage seedlings is hard to take, however, and, if you can be faffed with nematodes (at considerable cost), that is the way to go for serious growers. A few ‘irregular holes’ in your hostas? I would pour garlic-flavoured cream on your enemies.

Isabel Bannerman is, with her husband Julian, a leading garden designer — see their website to find out more about their projects.

This feature originally appeared in the issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'I love interiors that include things handed down over the years, with furniture and pictures that don’t quite go together and slightly clashing colour schemes,’ says George Saumarez Smith (below), a director of Adam Architecture. ‘The defining element of English style is that things are a little bit imperfect.’

George envisioned a comfortable room with a view of the garden, filled with plants, books and personal treasures. He is passionate about drawing, as evidenced by his book Sketchbooks: Collected Measured Drawings and Architectural Sketches (Triglyph, £40). ‘I decided to evoke the feeling of a panelled room by drawing it in pencil on paper and having it made into a wallcovering,’ he explains. Watts 1874 stepped in to reproduce his detailed drawing as a bespoke design on linen, its blue-and-white colourway providing the principal palette for the room.

The structure of the room is classical, as is to be expected of one of Britain’s most respected classical architects. Among his ongoing projects is the extensive restoration of the Grade I-listed Tottenham House, near Marlborough in Wiltshire, widely reported to be the most ambitious home renovation in the UK, after more than two decades on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register. He is the author of several books on architecture, and his new book, The Romance of Classicism, will be published by Rizzoli in September.

After studying architecture at the University of Edinburgh, he was taken on as a pupil of architect Quinlan Terry, who had begun his career with George’s grandfather, classical architect Raymond Erith. The latter had worked on the reconstruction of Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street after they were damaged by bombing during the Second World War. ‘Architecture is in my blood,’ he says, ‘but so is a love of books.’ His father, John Saumarez Smith, ran the Heywood Hill bookshop on Curzon Street, London, for more than 30 years, as well as editing book reviews for Country Life in the 1980s and 1990s. ‘I have inherited the disease of the book collector — I am destined to a life surrounded by books with never quite enough shelves,’ he says.

The panoramic wallcovering features drawings of George’s favourite works by an eclectic mix of British artists, including linocuts by Sheila Robinson, drawings by John Aldridge, paintings by Pat Albeck and an early-19th-century engraving of Winchester College, where he was at school, above the fireplace. ‘I like the sense that they have been collected over time,’ he says. The backdrop features a hexagonal design, inspired by a classical coffered ceiling, with a drawing of a large window looking onto a garden pavilion in the distance.

A tented ceiling in blue-and-white striped fabric hangs above a striking hexagonal stone floor and a Palladian-inspired chimneypiece, designed by George and made by the Somerset stone specialist Artorius Faber.

Comfortable chairs and an elegant demi-lune table from Munder Skiles are paired with an antique hexagonal table and a small mahogany writing desk. ‘This was made for the ship HMS Orion, which took part in the Battle of Trafalgar and was at one time captained by a distant relative, Admiral James Saumarez,’ he reveals.

To complete the design, a bookcase designed by George for his home some years ago houses a collection of carefully selected gardening books. ‘Given my father’s occupation, trawling bookshops was part of my childhood, so this was a nice excuse to dive right back into doing just that,’ he says. He set himself the goal of only buying books published before 1986. ‘Because they are more than 40 years old, they simply have a different feel,’ he says of the 300-volume collection he has amassed. (After the show, he plans to give them to his fiancée, Jane, as an early wedding present.)

‘By combining antiques with pieces from the 20th century, the 1960s and 1970s and more contemporary elements,’ he concludes, ‘the room is designed to show how Country Life represents both heritage and Englishness.’

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Canonteign Falls is a successful tourist attraction on the edge of Dartmoor. It also has two National Collections of ferns. You can take your children for an adventurous scramble up the escarpment of one of the highest waterfalls in England and dabble along the way in the Victorian passion for Dryopteris and Polystichum cultivars. In short, it has something for everyone.

The climb up the valley is immensely rewarding, but not for the faint hearted. The steps are irregular, often displaced by exposed tree roots and interrupted by outcrops of stone. Perhaps the best time to make the ascent is now, when sunlight shines through the young leaves of beech and oak and bluebells and wood anemones cover the woodland floor.

At one point, you cross over the stream and see the majestic arc of Lady Exmouth’s Falls glittering in the sunlight.

Further up is the series of gorges made by the original stream over tens of thousands of years. Higher still is the Victorian Fern Garden, richly planted with a great variety of ferns, although the whole valley is thick with wild species. When you reach the top, you step over the leat that feeds Lady Exmouth’s Falls until the path bursts open to a viewpoint known as Buzzards’ View, where the rich and rolling south Devon landscape stretches into the distance. It is an exhilarating experience.

The Canonteign estate — originally well over 2,000 acres — has an interesting history. In 1812, it was bought by Admiral Sir Edward Pellew Bt, who had enjoyed a successful naval career during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

In 1814, he was raised to the peerage and took the title Baron Exmouth of Canonteign in the County of Devon. Two years later, he commanded the Anglo-Dutch fleet during the Battle of Algiers, one of many naval campaigns to put an end to the activities of the Barbary corsairs who had for centuries pillaged the shores of the western Mediterranean, seizing the inhabitants and consigning them to slavery in north Africa. Lord Exmouth’s substantial naval force completely destroyed the Algerian fleet and compelled the Dey of Algiers to release some 1,200 enslaved Christians, although the Barbary pirates were not finally eliminated until the French captured Algiers in 1830.

The Admiral was upgraded from Baron to Viscount and retired back to Devon, but he never actually settled at Canonteign, preferring instead to live in a large house called West Cliff in Teignmouth itself.

Throughout his career, the Admiral was able to amass significant wealth from the proceeds of prize money, most notably when he commanded the East Indies station in 1805–09. This good fortune facilitated the acquisition of Canonteign. It was, however, his eldest son Pownoll — also a naval officer enriched by prize money — who took up residence at Canonteign Manor itself, the Elizabethan house at the centre of the estate.

It was Pownoll, later 2nd Viscount Exmouth, who commissioned London architect Charles Robert Ayers in 1828 to design and build a new house halfway up the hillside above the Falls. Canonteign House is a white mansion in the Greek Revival style, with Ionic columns, pilasters, floating pediments and a supreme neo-Classical elegance that places it among the greatest of Devon’s country houses.

One of the unexpected assets of the Canonteign estate turned out to be the presence of lead and silver lodes deep beneath the surface of the soil. A large number of hopeful speculators were granted leases or licences by the Exmouths to work these mines. The first was John Williams, a member of the west Cornwall mining family whose descen-dants own the great magnolia gardens at Caerhays Castle. He began to develop what was known as the Canonteign Mine in 1828.

However, the most successful enterprise, known as Frank Mills, was granted a lease by the Canonteign estate in 1853. The stream running down the valley from Dartmoor was the source of its success. Some of its water was diverted into a new reservoir, from which a heavy iron pipe carried it to the mill and the mine 250ft below. The strength of the flow was enough to pump water from the mine and enable the miners to drill ever deeper in search of mineral deposits, nearly 1,000ft below the surface. The turbines were later turned by coal-fuelled machinery that served to crush the ore.

Flooding was a recurrent problem: on one occasion, some careless working near the surface punctured the lake (where the ore was washed) and emptied its contents into the workings. The damage was quickly repaired and the lake, now known as Swan Lake and populated by black swans, is especially beautiful when the purple rhodo-dendrons that surround it are in flower. Nevertheless, flooding, as well as diminishing financial returns, caused the mine to close in 1880. It was the last mine in the Teign valley and almost its only monument today are heaps of spoil along the river bank.

The history of the Canonteign Falls after 1880 is obscured by legend. At some point, however, the piping below the reservoir was adjusted so that the water spewed out in the beautiful arching flow that we see today. Lady Exmouth’s waterfall has a clear drop of 230ft before it meets the natural stream again and continues on its journey, cascading down through massive rock formations into the lakes below and finally into the River Teign.

We are told that these Falls were created in 1890 when the kindly 3rd Lady Exmouth sought to help the redundant miners and employed them to divert the water. The problem with this story is that Lady Exmouth died in 1870, so the present owners are researching the oral history of the estate’s development. We are also told that she had made a fern garden among the rocks of the main valley. This is perfectly possible, not least because there was a craze for ferns for much of the second half of the 19th century, but no record of its existence has come yet to light among the estate’s papers and records.

Successive Viscounts lived at Canonteign for nearly 200 years, but the estate struggled to make ends meet until the 1980s, when the 10th Viscount opened the Falls as a tourist attraction. He also constructed four more lakes, beautifully landscaped, downstream from Swan Lake. In 1994, Christopher Baylis bought Canonteign House, together with 90 acres. Subsequent purchases have enabled the Baylises to acquire Canonteign Falls and build up a holding of 400 acres.

The Baylises were told about a Victorian fernery at Canonteign, but they had no idea of its site. Then, in 2009, a heavy snowfall damaged a venerable planting of cherry laurels and revealed the stonework of an extensive rock garden in a quarry-like area through which the original stream still flows. Clearly, this was the site of the long-lost fernery. The Baylises set to clearing it, firming up its boulders, and replanting it with as many varieties of fern as possible — including Dicksonia tree ferns from New Zealand that would not have formed part of the original layout, but which make a sympathetic addition to the site today.

They continued planting more ferns until they realised that they needed advice on how to source, cultivate and display them. Plant Heritage introduced them to Julian Reed, an enthusiastic and distinguished pteridologist, who had for many years taken over the collections of other fern-lovers who were no longer able to look after them. Mr Reed advised, researched, hunted for rarities and eventually built up Canonteign’s fern collection to some 400 cultivars.

In 2022, the collections of Dryopteris and Polystichum ferns, safely dispersed through-out the estate, were awarded the accolade of National Collection status by Plant Heritage.

The work of conservation continues and additions from Mr Reed’s private collection will ensure a secure future for these historic ferns at Canonteign Falls. Mr and Mrs Baylis are firmly committed to researching the history of the estate and protecting its future. The wellbeing of the ferns and the Falls alike are guaranteed for generations to enjoy.

Canonteign Falls, near Exeter, Devon — find out more about paying a visit at the Canonteign website.

This feature originally appeared in the April 15 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When parishioners of the Revd George Engleheart found, pinned to the church door, a notice announcing: ‘No service today, working with daffodils’, it was no practical joke. Engleheart was recognised for his brilliant work breeding Narcissus — he created 720 different types — and is credited with setting out the path that led towards the development of the modern daffodil, of which there are now about 27,000 named kinds.

As did many other gentleman clergymen of the 18th and 19th centuries, he devoted his spare time to horticulture — as well as, subsequently, archaeology. His methods of breeding were not systematic — he didn’t keep detailed records — but his enthusiasm led to spectacular results in flower size and vigour.

Engleheart (1851–1936) was the one of the first to breed from Poeticus, resulting in flowers with striking orange/red cups (trumpets). ‘Will Scarlett’ is one, its large orange trumpet surrounded by a pretty loose ruff of white perianth segments (petals), another feature of Engleheart’s work. In 1898, he sold three bulbs for £100 (in 19th-century money).

In 1900, he was awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour for his work. The Veitch Memorial Medal followed in 1926. ‘Mr Engleheart has enriched gardens with many lovely flowers with charming names,’ wrote the great E. A. Bowles in A Handbook of Narcissus (1934). According to Bowles, its creator ‘would not have believed a prophet’ who told him that his small stock bed ‘would in so short a time have provided the old and new worlds with millions of bulbs of this popular flower’.

Engleheart began experimenting with daffodils when living in Appleshaw, Hampshire, but it wasn’t until he and his wife, Mary, bought the 15th-century home Little Clarendon in 1901 — just over the border in Wiltshire — that things became serious. The 27-acre grounds were given over to numbered daffodil beds, but it all ended in 1923 when eelworm and fly infested the bulbs.

From then on, he devoted himself to archaeology, investigating the Romano-British sites in north-west Hampshire where he rediscovered the lost mosaic of Dionysus at Thruxton, which was given to the British Museum.

He also discovered a hoard of vessels from AD 350, including dishes with Christian symbols that provided definitive proof of the speed with which Christianity spread through the Roman Empire after Constantine’s conversion in AD 310.

This feature originally appeared in the April 1 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It is the scale of the garden at Mount Congreve that bowls you over — its size, its massive plantings and the huge number of different plants. Here are some facts and figures: Mount Congreve has 70 acres of woodland garden, four acres of walled garden and 10 miles of paths. There are more than 1,200 rhododendrons, 760 camellias, 300 Acer cultivars, 600 conifers, a nearly one-mile path lined with hydrangeas and thousands of herbaceous plants, including 600 yards of hostas.

Mount Congreve is in Co Waterford, not far from the city of Waterford itself, but perched high above the glorious Suir, one of Ireland’s best trout-fishing rivers. The history of the estate goes back to 1760, when John Congreve built the first house on the site, but the spacious shape of the present house and its garden are the work of the late Ambrose Congreve, who died unexpectedly in 2011 on a visit to London for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show — at the age of 104.

Congreve was a remarkable man. His conventional Anglo-Irish background sent him to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, but took an unusual turn when he then went to work for Unilever. In 1935, he married Marjorie Glasgow, whose American father owned a worldwide business that specialised in building gasworks. After the Second World War, Congreve took over the management of the company and eventually sold it, rather well, in 1983. In the cash-strapped post-war years, American money was a blessing for the garden. As late as 1989, Congreve employed more than 40 gardeners.

He began to develop Mount Congreve seriously in the 1960s, extending the house and starting to plant the garden that we see today, always with help from an exceptional Dutch head gardener, Herman Dool. The focus of his planting was a stretch of north-facing native woodland — oak, beech and chestnut — on the steep bank between the spacious lawn behind the house and the river below.

If you look at it on a map, the garden seems very long — at least one mile in length — and thin, but the paths are so carefully planned and the plantings so dense that you don’t notice that, in places, it is less than 200 yards in width. The soil is a crumbly, sandy clay, enriched by a great accumulation of organic matter in the top layer and with a pH that is perfect for acid-loving plants. The climate is mild and damp, with an average of about 42in of rain per annum; many of Mount Congreve’s plants would be too tender to survive further inland.

Open the garden door in early spring and you come face to face across the lawn with a spectacular planting of magnolias, the oldest in the whole garden: you will seldom see such tall and beautiful specimens of Magnolia campbellii, M. x veitchii and M. sprengeri var. diva. They are planted just below the level of the lawn, which brings their individual flowers down to a height at which they may be admired. A better view can be had from a cupola, known as the Temple, Congreve built on a high point within the wood itself. It is surrounded by a grove of Betula ‘Fascination’ and the highly scented rhododendrons ‘Lady Alice Fitzwilliam’ and R. ‘Fragrantissimum’.

The temple, where the ashes of Congreve and his wife, Marjorie, are buried, also has wonderful views across the river below and deep into Co Kilkenny to the north and as far west as the distant Comeragh Mountains. Its dome bears the inscription ‘Light and Shade by Turn but Love Always’. This wise reflection is sometimes engraved on sun-dials and Congreve first encountered it in Leopold de Rothschild’s garden at Ascott, Buckinghamshire, which he visited as a teenager.

It was Leopold’s son Lionel, a great friend of Congreve’s aunt Lady Bessborough, who had the most significant effect on his style of planting. Visits to Exbury in Hampshire not only ignited an early love of gardening in him (aged 11, he recalled), but also persuaded him to garden in the same grand manner. ‘When one plants anything,’ Con-greve declared, ‘whether it involves five or 50 plants, they should be planted together and not dotted here and there.’ This was the maxim that guided him all through his many years of planting at Mount Congreve.

An early example of his large-scale planting, 70 years ago, required no fewer than 70 plants of Rhododendron macabeanum, a Himalayan species with large, silver-backed leaves and pale-yellow flowers. News of this grouping had the world of rhododendron-lovers chattering for many years and Congreve applied the same principle to R. sinogrande, another out-size species. Everywhere at Mount Congreve, the plantings are on the greatest scale — vast groups of azaleas, hillsides planted with thousands of candelabra primulas and an extensive grove of scarlet Embothrium coccineum trees that have taken so well to the conditions at Mount Congreve (similar to their own birthplace in Chile), that they seed around in their thousands.

The most spectacular of all Congreve’s plantings is the Magnolia Walk, near the furthest end of the woodland. It is an avenue — a straight walk downhill, about 150 yards in length, lined on both sides by three different layers of magnolias. The tallest is M. campbellii, usually in full flower by St Patrick’s Day on March 17, closely followed by M. sargentiana var. robusta, then M. x soulangeana keeps up the display until the beginning of May. It is easily the longest such avenue in the British Isles. The sight of these majestic trees seen in March against a Mediterranean sky is nothing short of magical.

Many plants now in commerce originated in this spectacular garden, including named forms of Pieris and Correa backhouseana, but its magnolias take the prize. These include M. ‘John Congreve’ and M. ‘Lady Irene Congreve’, which commemorate Ambrose’s parents, a yellow form of M. campbellii now known as ‘Valentine’s Torch’ and M. campbellii ‘Ambrose Congreve’, which is always in flower on his birthday, April 4.

One way to gauge the extent of the mature plantings at Mount Congreve is to look at the roll of remarkable trees published by the Tree Register of the British Isles. This lists more than 100 outstanding specimens, including large-leaved Aesculus turbinata, huge davidias (the handkerchief tree) and no fewer than three record-breaking species of southern beech, Nothofagus betuloides, N. fusca and N. cunninghamii. These are relatively widely grown in Irish gardens — the surprise is to come across outsize trees that are much rarer, including the variegated field maple Acer campestre ‘Pulverulentum’ and elegant, but tender Cupressus cashmeriana. An older specimen, although not yet a record-breaker, is a Monterey cypress Cupressus macrocarpa, planted by Princess Marie-Louise on the occasion of Congreve’s baptism in 1907.

Mount Congreve is not only an early spring garden. Large plantings of Clerodendrum fargesii and C. trichotomum are at their best in autumn, as are the leaves of maples: Acer palmatum ‘Katsura’, ‘Beni-komachi’ and ‘Shishi-gashira’ are spectacular. May brings clouds of the coral flowers of the azalea Rhododendron ‘Favorite’ and an amphitheatre of dwarf R. yaku-shimanum in the old quarry. Snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells carpet the woodland floor before the tree canopy closes over.

The four-acre walled garden and its glasshouses are now focused on the propagation and conservation of rare plants. However, a pair of borders, 60 yards long, runs up the middle, with an historic planting of rare herbaceous peonies in every available shade of pink, red and crimson, plus some whites and yellows. It is fronted by Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ and backed by blue delphiniums, all shown off by swags of the roses ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ and ‘Veilchenblau’.

When Congreve reached his century in 2007, he planted a Wollemi pine that had been presented to him by his staff. The gardeners also kept a spare plant in case the original should fail, but, in fact, both survived and the second, of whose existence Congreve never knew, has performed very much better. The staff still joke that, had it been possible, he would have planted a clump of 100 to mark the occasion.

The Congreves had no children, so the estate is now in the process of being transferred to the Irish State. The first priority of the Office of Public Works was to restore and secure the adaptation of the huge house from a plutocrat’s private residence to the public and administrative functions required in the post-Congreve era. The garden is, however, infinitely more important and this was recognised last year by the award of a plaque from the International Dendrology Society declaring Mount Congreve as Distinguished for Merit. Castlewellan in Co Down is the only other recipient in Ireland. Inevitably, the garden slipped a little after Congreve’s death, but its restoration is now galloping apace and a new School of Horticulture passes on the immense knowledge that it encapsulates.

Find out more at the Mount Congreve website.

This feature originally appeared in the April 8 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

I still cannot use my thumbs when potting up a rooted cutting or potting on a plant. I use my fingers. They are better at gauging the pressure needed to firm the compost, be it peat-free (lightness of touch is important) or soil-based (a little firmer).

It is not something I learned from a book. This is a gardening skill based on feel and that can only be learned first hand (no pun intended), being shown the technique by someone who learnt it from someone else and then passed it on.

I was instructed on how to take a cutting, how to encourage it to form roots, how to plant a tree, sow a seed and myriad other growing techniques at the age of 15 when I went to earn my living in a nursery. I attended day-release classes and read books, but the key practical skills I needed as a gardener were learnt on the earth and at the potting bench in the company of experienced hands who, in their turn, had learned from those skilled gardeners who had gone before.

Watch a skilled grower and you can see evidence of a kind of ‘slap-dash love’, as Laurie Lee called it when referring to his mother’s way of gardening. It is an ease with plants; a way of handling them that comes with confidence and experience, of trial and error refined over the centuries. Such horny-handed sons and daughters of the soil are possessed of valuable skills that, if not handed down, will perish with them.

It is this premise upon which the new initiative Hortistry is founded. Hortistry was born out of a conversation between The King, Jekka McVicar and Susie Bacon at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Under its aegis a group of prominent practical horticulturists, gardeners, growers — call them what you will — has banded together to pass on their abilities and knowledge to the next generation of professional gardeners. McVicar the herb grower, Matt Pottage of the Royal Parks (ex-RHS Wisley), Brian Humphrey (one of the finest plant propagators in the land), Sheila Das (National Trust) and Tony Kirkham (retired head of the arboretum at Kew Gardens) are a few of the many accomplished and highly respected gardening gods and goddesses who are demonstrating their hard-won skills at practical workshops.

It is an exciting prospect. This month will see the first two masterclasses, each for about 40 attendees, who will have pre-registered their interest. One is at Beth Chatto’s Essex garden, the other at McVicar’s herb nursery near Bristol. Budding and grafting, seed sowing, taking cuttings — all at the very heart of plant propagation and successful cultivation — are being taught to a group of folk who will become the next generation of skilled growers.

More masterclasses will also be scheduled over the coming months, resulting in hard- won abilities being transferred to a whole new generation who understand the wisdom and the benefits of learning from those who have practised their craft over a lifetime of gardening.

Why do we undervalue such essential abilities? Why do we fail to understand the thrill and satisfaction of raising a plant from a speck of dust or a green leaf? We underestimate at our peril the worth of those who have the know-how, the ‘magic’ needed to ensure that the environmental concerns with which we burden the next generation can be addressed and ameliorated.

Some make their feelings known by going on marches and complaining to their MP. I believe that a far more pragmatic approach is by developing skills that will make a positive and practical difference to the land beneath our feet, and ultimately the wider landscape, as did the great gardeners who went before us and bequeathed to us these invaluable capabilities.

The founding of Hortistry will surely please The King. Anyone who has seen his excellent film Finding Harmony — A King’s Vision will understand that here is a man not simply paying lip service in terms of our duty to the land, but who actively encourages the practical application of knowledge and skills in addressing the problems that face our planet. Hortistry is doing that at grass-roots level.

As someone who has spent their life tending the earth, planting and sowing and endeavouring to transmit a love of and belief in the things that grow and on which we and all forms of life depend, I find the emergence of Hortistry wonderfully reassuring. It is all too easy to be overwhelmed by the problems facing our fragile landscape. This initiative is a tangible way of making a positive impact. All power to their gardening elbow.

This feature originally appeared in the April 15 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

What David Beckham was to football, Monty Don is to gardening — but with more skinny scarves. At 70, his ceaseless energy for all that is green and abundant, and indeed for life itself, is still palpable. ‘If somebody gives me something that has a use, I immediately want to go and use it straight away,’ he tells me, eagerly. ‘I think: “Great!” You know, if it was a kitchen knife at Christmas, I'd immediately go and cut something with it.’

The English horticulturalist is best known for Gardeners’ World, the BBC show which is now in its 57th series and which he presents from his garden Longmeadow, in Herefordshire, where he lives with his wife Sarah. Born in 1955 in West Germany, Monty has had a long, very green-fingered career, spanning more than 30 years in television, a 12-year stretch as the Observer’s gardening editor, a 10-year stint as the president of the Soil Association and an OBE.

He has also written copious books, the latest of which is British Gardens — and a collaboration with the photographer Derry Moore. It catalogues their journey visiting our isle’s most beautiful greenery. ‘We did our first book together in 2010 and this is our seventh book together,’ Monty says. ‘We're an unlikely couple, you know? We're sort of two slightly elderly men, although I'm 20 years younger than Derry. He'll be 90 at his next birthday.’

Although he ‘never has favourites’, Wollerton Old Hall in Shropshire was ‘magical on the day’, as was Scampston Walled Garden in Malton. Lowther Castle in Penrith also stood out and Balmoral Cottage was ‘utterly charming’, although Monty did add that if we continued the conversation much longer he ‘would probably name every single garden in the book’.

As he gets older his relationship with gardening hasn’t massively changed, but he does note: ‘It’s becoming increasingly less interesting to me how you do things, and much more interesting what you do and what the result is’.

Monty is, unequivocally, a man that speaks his mind exactly. ‘I don’t have a favourite,’ he tells me when I ask what his favourite painting is; ‘I don't really go to exhibitions,’ he says when I ask for his favourite of those. Other things Monty Don doesn’t have are: an aesthetic hero, (‘obviously’), any thoughts about who would play him in a film (‘absolutely no idea’), and even the slightest concern about some of my questions (‘I don't think it's a very interesting question, to be honest’).

When it comes to things he doesn’t do, they are likewise abundant. ‘I never sell possessions,’ ‘I’m not a collector’, ‘I don’t relax to music — ever,’ and ‘I never lie in’. He doesn’t like weight loss drugs (‘there’s something inherently immoral about it, but it’s quite hard to put your finger on what’), ‘cheffy food’ (‘I just think it’s all about the chef and not about you eating it’), or the state of the world right now (‘let's hope you will make a better world than this current lot — which are just a f***ing disaster — are doing. You can quote me on that.’)

Given that the format of Consuming Passions is that I ask for a definite list of the things that are meaningful to, and liked by, our guests and they answer, you could see this as a set back. However, answering questions, and indeed living his life, exactly how he wants to is, I come to realise, part of the man’s innate Monty Don-ness. And it is that which makes him so likable.

Your aesthetic hero

Obviously, I don’t have one, but I’m trying to summon one up from the aether. Let me say Constantin Brâncuși, because I love the way that he dressed, I love his sculptures, I loved his studio.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

Well, I don't really go to exhibitions in the sense that I live in the middle of the country and avoid cities except for work. Obviously, over the years, I've been to lots of exhibitions, but it sounds a bit tragic, if I name one that was 30 years ago. The truth is, the most impressive exhibition of my life was a Van Gogh exhibition at what is now Tate Britain. Then it was just the Tate Gallery. It was overwhelming. I mean, I couldn't speak, I could barely breathe. I can almost remember the intensity of the experience now.

A possession that you’d never sell

I never sell possessions anyway, but if I absolutely had to I wouldn’t sell this. It’s a stone that I picked up off the beach on Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire in 1979. It's almost round, it looks like a cannonball, and it's been with me since then. I wouldn't sell that for anything.

The items you collect

No, I’m not a collector. My wife Sarah is, I’m not. That's not the way my mind works.

A book you found inspiring

Well, there are at least 1000 of those, but one in particular, which, in a funny way, changed my life. When I was 18 I read a book called The Goshawk, by T. H. White, and I was profoundly affected by it. It's a very simple book. It's very short. It’s about how T. H. White attempted to train a goshawk using medieval techniques (this was in the 1930s). By then, of course, nobody was doing that. It was completely the wrong thing to do, which he didn't know, and goshawks are famous for being the most untrainable, certainly of all birds of prey, and pretty much of most species. So it was doomed to failure.

But it's the story of how he did it. And the whole point was that he had this intense relationship with this animal that didn't want to have a relationship with him. I just thought it was a marvellous piece of writing and also incredibly romantic in a very, very self destructive way.

Your favourite painting

I don’t have a favourite, but there are some I love more than others. I love Rembrandt. There's a painting by him called ‘A Woman Bathing in a Stream’. It is incredibly beautiful. No other painter has painted tenderness in the same way. He’s extraordinary. So if I had to choose a favourite painting, that's the one I would choose. She hasn’t got a particularly stunning body, she's not particularly beautiful, it's not particularly bright, but she's hitching up her shift to wade into the water, and it's just exquisite. She's made beautiful by the painting, but that is through his love and tenderness, rather than because she's objectively a great beauty.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

Topiary hornbeam balls.

The music that you work to

I don't. I used to, but I find now — in the last sort of five years or so — whether it's part of my hearing going a bit so therefore I have to listen harder — it’s distracting. But when I used to work to music, it was always Baroque music, namely Bach. I don't relax to music ever. What I found was it put me in the right space in order to focus. Almost the opposite of relaxing. I think it's sublime music. I hate background music. I hate it when people put music on at dinner parties and things because I just think that it means that the music has no value, has no importance. It is wallpaper music, and I don't like that. So what I find now is I either want to listen to the music or I want to work, but I can't do both simultaneously.

The last podcast you listened to

I came to podcasts a few months ago. I'd never heard one at all until this year, and I have been listening almost obsessively to The Rest is History, which I think is brilliantly done.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

I have absolutely no idea or interest. It's not something I've ever thought of. What a boring film. I don't know how to answer that question, because I have no concept of anyone who's like me. Now, that's either because I'm such an egomaniac that I am sort of completely self obsessed, or… I just, I don't think it's a very interesting question, to be honest. I know it's not one you’ve devised probably, so I don't know. I don't think I see enough films.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

A sculpture by Brâncuși or Henry Moore, Sarah and my dog.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

The sun streaming through the window. But actually, what gets me up, as opposed to awake, is just a sense that I've got a lot to do. In the garden we always have an 8:30am meeting, and by then I like to have exercised, washed, had breakfast, fed the dogs. So in summer, I normally get up at about 6am.

A hotel you could go back and back to

I associate hotels entirely with work, and I stay in a lot. It wouldn't be uncommon for me to stay in 50 different hotels a year. There's one in Venice that I like, I can't remember what it's called though. It's not very grand, it's not a fancy one, but it's just really central. And what I like about it is that you just walk out the door into a boat. Usually for me it’s all about: is it quiet? Is it reasonably comfortable? Are the sockets where I want there to be sockets so I can charge things? Is the food any good? Is there room service? It's all about function, rather than a lovely place to be. I never spend time off in a hotel.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

I’ve had lots, I’ve been lucky, but plucked at random: we were filming a series I did in Italy, a long time ago, and on the first day's filming, we shot just outside Naples in a small holding. And the people there said we must have lunch with them. They had this modern house with a very modern kitchen, and they put up tables on a tarmac driveway in front of the house, and we proceeded to have the most delicious meal imaginable. It was nothing fancy.

I can remember it to this day, pasta with lemons and peas, with the best lemon in the world, and these peas that were picked fresh. And he made the wine from his grapes, and they'd pressed the olive oil themselves. The family were all there, and it was just joyous. This is why you have a mouth and you need to put calories inside it. It chimed completely with the philosophy that Sarah and I have which is, you take simple, fresh, seasonal ingredients, you treat them with great respect, but not with solemnity, and you do things simply and sort of just try and get the very best from them. And this was a supreme example of that, and it was the incongruity of the location and the wonderfulness of the food that made it completely memorable.

The best present you’ve ever received

My first dog. For my 21st birthday I received a dog from my mother and a field from my father. The dog was called Gretel, which is slightly odd when I look back on it, and she was a labrador.

‘British Gardens’ by Monty Don and Derry Moore is out now and available in all good bookshops, in store and online.

Double flowers are bad news for the survival of the species. Most of them are sterile, because their stamens have foolishly been turned into extra petals. Nevertheless, they turn up from time to time among the wild populations of many plants.

If you think that a gorgeous Hybrid Tea or a perfect carnation is the last word in elegance, it is because one of its wild ancestors had a few extra petals, then our own ancestors thought it was pretty or useful and decided to preserve it. The rest is down to generations of industrious plant-breeders scratching around for a few grains of pollen to develop yet better plants for our enjoyment.

Double primroses are a case in point. Gerard’s Herball (1597) mentions several aberrant primulas, including a double-flowered cowslip ‘so commonly knowne that it needeth no description’ and ‘our garden double Prim-rose’, which he considered the ‘greatest beauty’ of all. John Parkinson, writing some 30 years later, says that ‘there are many prettie varieties’, including ‘the field Primrose, very thicke and double, and of the same sweete sent [sic] as the singles’.

One reason for the popularity of double primroses is that they are old-fashioned garden plants; their charm evokes the cottage gardens of olde England. All these double-flowered primulas arose as genetic mutations and quickly became popular plants among discriminating collectors. Double reds turned up later in the 17th century and, by 1800, several double purples and mauves were known. William Robinson wrote in 1883 that ‘no sweeter or prettier flowers ever warmed into beauty under a northern sun than their richly and delicately-tinted little rosettes’.

Perhaps the best known of Victorian doubles was ‘Marie Crousse’, still occasionally seen today, which is bright cerise with a few white flecks in its petals. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Aberdeen nurserymen James Cocker & Son began to breed double-flowered polyanthus — polyanthus is the name given to hybrids between cowslips and primroses. Cocker’s introductions carried the logo ‘Bon Accord’, which is the motto of the family’s native city. The Cockers were able to breed and name about 100 new cultivars, but few have survived through to modern times. They tend to have rather a short central stem, which means that a plant in flower often resembles a primrose more than a polyanthus.

The problem of breeding double primroses was made easier by the rediscovery in 1900 of Mendel’s experiments in plant hybridisation. At some point, scientists realised that a recessive gene was responsible for the production of double flowers. The only way to make progress was to cross two plants that were known to carry this gene. One quarter of the resultant seedlings would be double-flowered and two-thirds of the remaining plants would also have the potential to breed double-flowered seedlings, but obscured by the dominant gene for single flowers. That discovery has been the basis of all subsequent development or almost all, because some double primroses carry fewer petals in the autumn and may occasionally produce pollen and be capable of setting seed.

Crucial to the establishment of modern double primroses has been the work of a nursery called Barnhaven, which was founded in Oregon, USA, nearly 100 years ago, then moved first to the Lake District and finally to Brittany in France. Barnhaven is the leading breeder of specialist primroses and polyanthus, including hose-in-hose cultivars, jack-in-the greens, gold-laced cowslips — and doubles. It has succeeded in identifying a wide range of single-flowered varieties that carry the ‘double gene’. These are hand-pollinated and their seed is sold with the warning that only a quarter of the seedlings are likely to be doubles. Nevertheless, the range of the nursery’s colours is remarkable and many amateurs speak enthusiastically of its seedlings.

There was a revival of interest in double primroses in the 1970s and 1980s, but only a few new cultivars were introduced. Commercial growers found them too labour-intensive in terms of feeding, watering and dividing. Enthusiasts scour the lists of traditional nurserymen and pounce on anything they can find. A few are listed in the RHS Plant Finder: look out for pinky-orange-yellow ‘Ken Dearman’, violet-blue ‘Blue Sapphire’, rich-red ‘Corporal Baxter’ and the spectacular ‘Miss Indigo’, a Barnhaven seedling with dark-blue flowers that have irregular white edges.

Nowadays, double primroses are micropropagated — these are the ones you see in garden centres, marketed as smart bedding plants. The leading introducer of new doubles is David Kerley, a professional plant breeder from Cambridgeshire. He is highly regarded for the garden-worthiness of his plants — he trials them very carefully — and also for the introduction of new colours and combinations. Kerley’s primroses carry his Belarina trademark, followed by their colour. Belarina Pink Champagne and Belarina Tangerine Twist are among his best known, but many varieties — there are more than a dozen in commerce now — are bicolored, with a delicious combination of shades in every petal.

Most of the double primulas grown today are sophisticated forms of our common primrose, but a few are more closely related to cowslips. ‘Katy McSparron’ is said to be a cross between a cowslip and a polyantha, but most people consider it merely a double cowslip. It is packed with petals and easy to grow — and the flowers have a good cowslip scent, too. There is also an excellent double-flowered form of the old gold-laced cowslip called ‘Elizabeth Killelay’. It is not thickly double — if you peer into the flowers, you can see the mahogany-coloured petals also have a yellow base — but the golden edging is a wonderful contrast for the dark rows of outer petals.

Despite their exquisite shapes and colours, there is as yet only one National Collection of double primroses. It stretches to some 90 different cultivars, curated by Caroline Stone at her Glebe Garden in north Cornwall since 2014. She is an avid researcher and enthusiastic collector, determined to hunt down and conserve every double primrose that might otherwise be lost to cultivation. She worries that many modern varieties have already disappeared from sight: ‘Torchlight’, for example, was introduced by Hopleys of Much Hadham in Hertfordshire in about 1980 and even given an RHS Award of Garden Merit, but nonetheless seems to be extinct.

She also has successes: Parkinson’s original ‘field Primrose, very thicke and double’ no longer exists, but Stone has no fewer than five double forms of our native wild primrose, each of which has a different arrangement of its petals. Double primroses should be as easy to grow as any other primrose or polyantha. At the end of the 19th century, William Robinson recommended them for mossy banks, alongside uncomplicated shade-lovers such as dog’s-tooth violets, lily-of-the-valley and cyclamen, but anywhere where they are protected from the full-on heat and drought of summer is usually acceptable.

All double primroses, cowslips and polyanthus benefit from regular lifting, division and replanting in fresh soil to maintain their vigour. Some need splitting more frequently than others. The general rule is to split the clumps once a year, a job best done in autumn when there is plenty of rain and the soil is still warm enough to encourage the plant to root well. Some nurserymen who want to build up stocks for sale split them up immediately after flowering and then again in autumn.

All gardeners, however, find that some are easier to cultivate than others. The paradox is that the ‘difficult’ ones that malinger must once have been vigorous enough to be propagated in the first place.

‘I spent a career killing moles and mice and I’m never doing it again,’ says Josh Sparkes, the former head gardener at Forde Abbey, Somerset whose growing methods at Birch Farm in Devon are causing a stir. He advocates ‘natural farming’, in which netting and fleece are unnecessary, because there are no pigeons or cabbage white butterflies. He doesn’t hoe, as weeds are useful, and he doesn’t make or use compost, because it separates the soil from life above ground. In natural farming, the aim is to cooperate with Nature, growing food in a frictionless way. Moles are fine because no one minds if the ground is bumpy and mice are kept in check by their many predators.

The courses that Sparkes and his small team have been leading at the farm in Woolfardisworthy (known as Woolsery) are a hot ticket and the quality of food at these events is persuasive. The 17 acres of former dairy pasture he manages on the edge of the Atlantic (with all the wind and rain that entails) are bursting with vitality. It has taken five years to reach a level of equilibrium in which ‘pests’ are balanced by predators and are, indeed, welcomed. Sparkes is keen to disseminate the knowledge that he picked up in North America and Japan, where he went on study fellowships to find alternatives to the gardener’s endless round of whack-a-mole. ‘It’s not Nature being a pain,’ he says. ‘All of the problems we have with pests and diseases are because of us.’

When the mammals, insects and birds come for your crops, it’s indicative of an imbalance, explains Sparkes. This is clearly illustrated in the lifestyle of slugs: get rid of them and they come back. Continual removal means that their predators go elsewhere and are not so quick to return, leaving slugs and snails to do their worst. At Birch Farm, animals are encouraged to hunt and nest right in the middle (‘I want hedgehogs in my cabbages,’ he says). Hedgerows and herbal leys are known for supporting biodiversity, but their benefits are limited to the edges. ‘We allow abundance everywhere,’ explains Sparkes. ‘The birds don’t feel the need to eat everything… if a blackbird eats a strawberry, he will get the slug next to it as well.’

Wildlife began to return within a year or two of Sparkes’s arrival, when he was given the opportunity to experiment (with full cooperation from the farm’s owners, tech entrepreneurs Michael and Xochi Birch). ‘Since we’ve had lots of mice and voles, we’ve got lots of predatory birds,’ says Sparkes. ‘We don’t worry about pigeons any more because there’s always a hawk or a buzzard flying around.’ Simplicity is one aim of natural farming: when you know that slugs and beetles share the same habitat, it makes sense to create earthen beetle banks among the crops to facilitate the food chain. ‘I’m thinking about what’s best for the birds and the beetles and the bugs and then basing a system around that,’ he says.

Sparkes looks to the ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One-Straw Revolution and proponent of a do-nothing approach to farming. It’s not quite doing nothing, but Fukuoka maintains that natural farming should be ‘pleasant’; there is no enjoyment to be had from tampering. Sparkes learned in Japan that it is more useful to observe and react in a measured way, in other words, to relax. Harvested areas are not immediately cleared because they provide excellent hunting grounds. ‘We don’t prepare a bed until we need it,’ notes Sparkes. ‘Blackbirds love an old kale bed; they run through the stems and use them as cover; beetles and snakes also love it. Leaving that bed standing builds up huge amounts of habitat.’

The permaculture technique, chop and drop, in which plant material is cut (not hoed) and left in situ to decompose, is another way of providing habitat for gastropods and arthropods. Pernicious weeds are dug out once a year, but, generally, weeds are cut with a sickle if they need to be cleared. Sparkes has found that because weeds and wildflowers automatically cover exposed ground, they are a carbon-free, effort-free (and simply ‘free’) equivalent of groundcover that is sold as a fertiliser and is often imported. Seeds are introduced as little as possible; the ambition is that vegetables (there are fifth-generation kales here), as well as trees, will come from the farm, which includes a pocket of ancient forest.

Produce beds are grown as polycultures, each consisting of five vegetable families, with five to 15 weed species on top of that. The diversity of plants increases biodiversity above and below the soil (including microbes) thus building soil fertility. One bed might consist of the contents of a salad bag, efficient to harvest, with rocket, beetroot, pea shoots, beans and spring onion. Every bed has an aromatic herb, which is not harvested. ‘The herb and its fragrance are healing, for us and the plants.’

Most of the farm is cultivated as a food forest. Based on the idea of a Japanese micro forest, a broad range of tree saplings and shrubs is closely planted, mimicking the natural world. Willow and poplar woodland pioneers are valuable for their foliage, maximising photo-synthesis, drawing carbon into the soil and accelerating growth among the others. ‘All of our agroforestry is based on the idea of quick forest succession,’ says Sparkes. ‘It seems to work absolute wonders.’ He compares the results to a rainforest; in this closely packed growing environment, nothing needs staking or protection from mice and voles (with no predators around, deer are fenced out entirely).

Sparkes was in the RAF before training as a gardener and there is a sense of military precision in the way he creates order out of potential chaos. Wouter van Eck is another thinker who interests him, a syntropic farmer who develops the concept of food forests as profitable agricultural systems. Ten acres of agroforestry at Birch Farm are based on syntropic agriculture and make an ‘efficient pick’, but Sparkes also values what he calls the smaller ‘romantic food forest’, which makes for an inefficient pick, but is closer to the medieval idea of the Garden of Eden. Agro-forestry, he maintains, is not dissimilar to an old-fashioned orchard. He doesn’t mind admit-ting that looks are an important part of the enjoyment; he is a former gardener after all.

Clearly, shade is an important commodity in a changing climate and there is a strong need to move away from unsustainable farm practices. Sparkes would love to flip the field-forest ratio in the British landscape and, more immediately, tip the balance away from high-input annual production towards perennials. He has been introducing unfamiliar flavours into the kitchen at The Farmers Arms in Woolsery and perennial salad bags sell out at the village shop (pub and shop are both owned by the Birches and part of the Woolsery Collective).

Of the perennial salad plant, salt bush, he says: ‘It’s one of the most nutritional things you can eat.’ Indeed, it is one of many plants that we could be eating now and which increasingly interest chefs. Sparkes is busy spreading the word that perennial growing is the future. ‘It’s going to be huge,’ he says. ‘You can already feel it.’

This feature originally appeared in the March 25, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe. Find out more at the Woolsery website.

When the botanical photographer Roger Phillips and his wife, Nicky Foy, moved into an apartment with a balcony overlooking Eccleston Square, SW1, the garden spectacle below was only moderately alluring. ‘There was a wire fence around the perimeter of the square because the original iron railings, as with so many London squares, had been removed for the war effort,’ Ms Foy recalls. This was in 1974. ‘It looked green, but there was lots of privet and lilac. To anyone who knew anything about gardens, it was pretty utilitarian.’

What followed was transformative, says Ms Foy, co-author of several books — notably Herbs and A Photographic Garden History — with her late husband. ‘In the early 1980s, Roger had just completed his photo books on plants, so he was asked to become the square’s honorary garden manager. He put a huge effort into improving soil quality and introducing different plants and trees for all-year-round interest.’

His legacy is seen in the National Collection of Ceanothus, a fine range of roses and camellias, several species of maple for autumn colour and even a Wollemi pine. The winner of numerous London in Bloom and London Garden Squares awards, Eccleston Square does not hide behind inscrutable laurel as some gardens do, so even circulating around the outside in the spring and summer months is pleasant, vegetation spilling through the (now-restored) railings, the air heavy with the scent of hawthorn blossom or roses.

London’s first residential garden square to be named as such was Bloomsbury Square. Laid out in the 1660s, it became a tourist attraction. Others soon followed, their lushness a striking contrast to the dusty piazze of Continental cities. The later-generation Eccleston Square was one of several laid out by Thomas Cubitt in the early to mid 19th century. The terrace properties that went up around them were only equipped with small back yards, therefore the squares acted as private gardens for keyholding residents—roles that Eccleston and its neighbours Warwick, Chester and Eaton squares still fulfill today.

Although not on the scale of Belgrave, Bedford or Russell squares, Eccleston Square still feels grand. You can stand in the more open western end, plane trees looming above like stately guardians, and be entirely unaware of the secluded eastern end, with its maze-like paths, stone memorial to Phillips and creeper-screened tennis court. Today, the space is maintained by professional gardeners in the employ of the square’s residential garden committee.

In Islington, N1, Barnsbury Square, surrounded by attractive stuccoed villas, feels more boutique. Also originally designed by Cubitt as a private square, it was taken into public ownership by Islington Council in 1933. Various elements of the day-to-day upkeep are undertaken by Friends of Barnsbury Square Gardens, recent Green Flag Community Award winners, in partnership with the council’s Environment and Regeneration team. Lucy Kilborn of the Friends explains: ‘We have a regular volunteer team of about eight, including Saturday-morning gardening volunteers. We often have kids gardening as part of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme and other volunteers may pop in once, several times or for a few weeks of gardening before life takes them elsewhere. Our youngest volunteers, from Thornhill Primary School, come about four times in their summer term: they’re a great help with mulch moving.’

The inevitable volunteer churn begets a constant effort to source new recruits via websites such as Nextdoor and the Friends’ website. Ms Kilborn says, however, that putting notices on the entrance gates remains the most successful strategy, ‘probably because people like to come and meet those they might be working alongside’.

She has been involved with the square for 15 years. ‘We’re extremely lucky to have these green squares and the diversity of spaces and architecture that make Barnsbury — and Islington — a special place to live and work in. Parks and open spaces in a densely populated environment have to fulfil many functions, from benefiting people’s mental health to being recreational spaces. We’re constantly balancing that and maintaining a green environment.’

Nikolaus Pevsner thought London’s garden squares were its ‘main contribution… to the history of European town planning’. The idea of squares as shared space still influenced thinking when the Barbican was laid out on land levelled during the Blitz. Open spaces within the long terraces offer a mix of communal and private squares, most of them residents only. ‘Many people are astounded that such a biodiverse haven exists in the Square Mile and regard it as the lung of the Barbican,’ says Paul Baldassari, leader of the City of London Corporation’s City Gardens team.

‘It’s a veritable wildlife sanctuary with ponds, bird boxes and feeders, insect hotels and log piles. No green waste leaves the garden, everything is composted on site.’ Trees tend to be smaller species of the rowan, goat willow and spindleberry variety, and, in addition to a host of common bird types, past visitors include the great spotted woodpecker, a kestrel and a falcon. More than 200 species of insects, including stag beetles, have been recorded.

Since 2015, the area of the Barbican known as the Beech Gardens has undergone a redesign, shifting from a previously formal layout of flowerbeds and shrubberies to a naturalistic, low-maintenance look. Mr Baldassari says: ‘Although it’s an innovative, forward-thinking scheme, some say it lacks colour. The loss of the lawn area for residents and visitors has been frequently commented on. We used to plant in excess of 25,000 bedding plants twice a year.’ However, he adds, ‘artistic types have said the juxtaposition of the hard, gritty industrial look alongside soft seasonal colours and shapes works. I’ll never forget one comment, to the effect that they thought “the gardens were keeping this concrete behemoth at bay”’.

Back at Eccleston Square, Ms Foy reflects on how a campaign in the late 1980s was instrumental in drawing overdue attention to London’s squares as heritage assets. ‘In 1989, there were plans to excavate under Eccleston Square to create a car park. The residents fought off the proposals and we were able to buy the square from the freeholder, so that we own it in perpetuity. But Roger, who was very skilled with the media, did a huge amount of press and people from other threatened squares started coming to him for advice, so he set up the Society for the Protection of London Squares.’ Unfortunately, she admits, he was not a committee man and the society faded.

Nonetheless, Eccleston Square became the first garden square to open for the National Garden Scheme in 1989 and has since raised almost £80,000 for the latter’s charities. The National Garden Scheme Open Days and London Open Gardens weekends can be seen as various spiritual offspring of the endeavours of Phillips (awarded an MBE in 2010 for services to London garden squares). They are a nudge to the rest of us not to take these subtle enrichments of our streetscapes for granted. They are also sanctuaries for small, local wildlife; Ms Kilborn states that Friends of Barnsbury Square’s mission is to ‘boost the local eco-system where we can. We now have a wildflower meadow and some dead hedging, for instance, which support insect life; but it’s also to create a friendly community hub welcoming everyone, however often they pop in, whether daily or only once or twice a year’.

Eccleston Square, opens for the National Garden Scheme on May 10. The 2026 London Open Gardens Weekend is on June 6–7.

‘Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland’ and ‘Trees’ by Roger Phillips are now available in revised and expanded editions from Macmillan.

Gardening fashions come and go — and sometimes it is difficult to know exactly how and why. One that bugs me at the moment is the dead hedge.

Those that I have seen are laid between two rows of uprights, typically fence posts, bashed into the ground in pairs, about a yard apart. Some of them also have chicken wire to keep the filling in place, although it looks rather ugly in the way that chicken wire always does.

You pile the space between them with your garden prunings, laid lengthwise to follow the direction of the fence. Some of the branches may stick out a bit, but you can tell yourself that they are for birds to perch on.

You build up the ‘hedges’, as and when you have the right sort of woody stuff to add to the heap, to a height of 6ft or 7ft (but, actually, they look a bit spooky once you reach about 4ft). The branches settle down over the months ahead and so you add more branches on top. In wet weather, it soon becomes a barrier of rotting, decaying wood. Lovely.

Now let us apply the William Morris test — do their proud owners know that dead hedges are useful or believe them to be beautiful? We can get rid of the ‘beautiful’ question at once because I have never seen a pretty one. Their aesthetic value is about on a par with a compost heap. They might make their owners feel good, but they aren’t going to win the Turner Prize, although I suppose it is possible that one has already done so.

It follows that the only possible excuse for dead hedges lies in their usefulness. Who finds them useful and preaches their virtues? People say they are good for wildlife and sustainable because they reuse prunings and clippings. There are other ways of dealing with all that surplus wood. The oldest practice, not always acceptable nowadays, is to pile it up, make a splendid winter bonfire and put oversize potatoes in the ashes to cook through and thrill the young.

When you go back, the next day, to the site of the bonfire, you find a heap of ashes and wonder how exactly you are supposed to use it in the garden. You will also find a circle of half-burnt branches that need to be gathered up and set alight again. However, most of us grow out of our infantile pyromania by the time we leave our teens and, besides, potatoes are much better baked in the bottom of the Aga.

The proper use for woody cut-offs, meaning everything from fallen branches and hedge trimmings to rose prunings and discarded Christmas trees, is to put them through a chipper. All is then reduced to smaller pieces — you can control the size — to make a springy surface for woodland paths or a fine heap to mulch down, feed your ornamental trees and shrubs and keep weeds at bay.

Unlike dead hedges, woody chips do look rather attractive, wherever they are used. If you leave them to rot down for a while, the bacteria on the surface get on with their recycling work so excitedly that the heaps warm up and actually start smoking. Ergo, baking potatoes is still an option. However, it is better to water the heap to cool it off and encourage the woodchips to rot down.

The branches you put in a dead hedge take much longer, if ever, to turn into a mulch, but they are just as flammable as piles of woodchips. Therein lies my principal objection to them — in dry summers, they are a fire risk. Ask a dead-hedge owner how they will prevent theirs from exploding into flames and they will reply: ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Fag ends are dumped everywhere. Years ago, a stranger passing along a public footpath on my land casually chucked a lighted cigarette onto a pile of field-hedge trimmings. I pleaded with the fire brigade to arrive before the flames reached our electricity substation — which they did (the firemen, not the flames). The mere memory is enough to convince me that dead hedges are not only ugly and pointless, but potentially lethal, too. Avoid!

Charles Quest-Ritson’s book The Olive Tree (Ediciones El Viso, £50) is out now.

This feature originally appeared in the March 11 of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Several Roman roads cross the Cheshire Plain, then an important region for harvesting salt, a valuable commodity. Indeed, much earlier, salt attracted Bronze Age traders who extracted it from the low-lying plain’s briny springs. From medieval times, the clay-based ground was exploited both for brickmaking and extracting marl, used for centuries to fertilise poor farmland. These local industries left behind thousands of pits that steadily filled with water to become irregular field ponds, still a distinctive feature of the area.

You may not be aware of any of this when driving through the county, for it conceals such secrets behind impenetrable hawthorn hedgerows that border the quiet, slender lanes with cascades of white blossoms in spring. They wind between traditional villages and hamlets, where dwellings are composed of timbers sawn from mighty oaks of centuries past and the famous russet clay bricks dug from the ground. You will, however, sense that this is ancient, pastoral land, still largely peaceful in character, composed of small-scale farms and grand estates, many with renowned gardens, including those at Arley Hall, Cholmondeley Castle and Tatton Park.

Cogshall Grange, set back from one of those pretty lanes, is a much more recent addition to Cheshire’s distinguished horticultural scene, having an intimate, early-21st-century garden of rare quality. Comprising an imposing, late-Georgian lodge and ancillary, connected buildings, the Grange sits near ‘the big house’ of Cogshall Hall, of similar age.

The gardens of both the Hall and the Grange were originally designed as one, by the studio of landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, before the properties were separated and sold off individually a few years ago by the previous owner. Nevertheless, they are dramatically different from each other. Whereas the gardens of the Hall are more formal and open in nature, leading seamlessly into substantial parkland, Cogshall Grange has complete possession of the old walled garden, as well as several acres of surrounding park and meadow. In earlier times, the walled garden’s role was traditional, providing year-round food for the Hall. Today, it is a modern work of art, combining shapeliness and serenity, with the emphasis shifting in defined ways through the seasons.

From whichever direction you enter the walled garden, located immediately west of the Grange itself, its compelling eye-catcher is a splendid avenue of cloud-pruned hornbeams, clipped in the Japanese manner known as niwaki. They are lined up alongside the garden room, a modern, glass and bronze-clad extension of the house. Kept shapely by hand-trimming three times a year, the hornbeams line a crisp, flagstone path, the first of several parallel paths that define the main north/south axis, the centrepiece of which is a long, rectangular waterlily pool. Converted from an old swimming pool, its updated role is reflective, mirroring the sculptural hornbeams along one side.

On the other side, the pool’s reflections highlight choice small trees, such as Oriental dogwoods, the stag’s horn sumach Rhus typhina ‘Dissecta’ and the smoke bush Cotinus coggygria, which rise above seas of prairie-style herbaceous perennials and grasses. This west side of the garden builds up steam through summer and autumn, but in spring its gravelled beds are lively with lemon-and-lime eruptions of self-sown euphorbias, scarlet-orange ‘Ballerina’ tulips and violet-blue spires of camassia.

Spring is a special time for the garden, with multiple foliar effects. The pruned hornbeams, for example, wear their ‘clouds’ with all the bright, lime-green freshness that explodes from their newly opened leaves. Forming a carpet beneath them, the underplantings are complementary, with bold groups of bronze-leaved Rodgersia podophylla, coppery-leaved barrenworts — Epimedium x versicolor and Epimedium x rubrum — and unfurling, emerald scrolls of Hosta ‘Devon Green’. They all look splendidly comfortable together.

Between the hornbeams and the pool is another long, rectangular bed, this one simply planted with a sheet of purple moor grass, Molinia caerulea ‘Poul Petersen’. Its calm, summer-meadow effect of gently swaying sheaves is preceded in spring by bright jewels of colourful tulips, erupting out of the new season’s grasses, before they have grown tall. This wonderfully adaptive Molinia tolerates a wide range of soils, from somewhat dry to heavy and damp, but it is all cut back to base by hand at winter’s end. The tulips in this section are reliable Darwin Hybrid and lily-flowered types, in rich colours of mauve, magenta, orange-scarlet and deep plum. Their flowers, on long stems, seem to float in an ethereal layer above the young grass, reflecting prettily in the lily pool.

All of the above areas can be viewed in a continuous scene from a very generous terrace at the garden’s north end. Looking southwards across rippling grasses and watery reflections, this is the place for sun loungers, family dining, entertaining or simply sitting and contemplating the garden’s engagingly calm nature.

Despite its suntrap location, the terrace also provides the option to dine in deep shade, within an abstract, bronze pavilion by the celebrated architect Jamie Fobert. The pavilion reveals its interesting geometry to those who venture inside. Here, you discover its ceiling of colliding triangular planes, like a magnificent, unfolding work of origami cast in sheets of bronze.

‘I have been known to lie on the table to look up into its roof and appreciate all the geometry going on,’ says Julia Kirkham, who has lived at Cogshall Grange for the past four years. A life-long and very knowledgeable gardener and sometime designer and florist, Mrs Kirkham continues to develop the gardens and put her own stamp on the seasonal plantings, always continuing, she says, to appreciate and enhance the walled garden’s tranquil atmosphere.

In particular, she has a special fondness for the summer and autumn flowers and grasses of the New Perennial style, that were a key feature of her former garden for some 24 years, the celebrated Crockmore House, at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. At Cogshall Grange, she is ‘planting a lot of my tried and trusted favourites — the echinaceas, rudbeckias, asters such as A. x frikartii ‘Mönch’ and ‘Little Carlow’.

Some seven acres of park, meadow and orchard surround the walled garden. Mrs Kirkham has transformed one area near the house into an engaging, hedge-enclosed garden containing a fine greenhouse and raised beds for growing edibles, roses and cutting flowers. ‘This area feels completely different,’ she says. ‘It’s lovely to sit out here in summer with a cup of coffee and feel as if you’re in France; its gravelled ground is a bit like a boules court and it’s a relaxing place to be.’

The park has many beautiful trees and a substantial natural pond near the drive. Did its original excavation provide the clay for the russet bricks of Georgian Cogshall Hall and Grange? That is unconfirmed, but it seems very possible, in this interesting region that is so closely connected with its ground.

This feature originally appeared in the March 18, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.