Gardens
Britain's best gardens, and advice on how to transform your own with seasonal advice from leading gardeners & Country Life experts.
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'It's perfect': The lush and charming RHS Garden of the Year at Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Kazuyuki Ishihara's 'Cha No Niwa – Japanese Tea Garden' has won the coveted RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year, the top award at the Chelsea Flower Show. And it's a worthy winner.
By Toby Keel Published
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Monty Don's dog, The King's new rose and the 'perfect' garden: What not to miss at the Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Country Life's gardens editor Tiffany Daneff shares her favourite flowers, gardens, clever ideas and nicest surprises from the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show.
By Toby Keel Published
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: Welcome to Country Life's 'Outdoor Drawing Room'
The 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show opens today and with it Country Life's first stand in a quarter of a century.
By Rosie Paterson Published
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Hampnett House: A Gloucestershire garden where an empty, squelchy lawn has been replaced by 'gorgeous flowery generosity'
What to do if you inherit a garden that isn’t your style? Tiffany Daneff visits the garden at Hampnett House, Gloucestershire — home of Mr Sanjeev Shah and Ms Mansi Amin — and finds a space that has undergone a major transformation, from high-concept minimalism to flower-filled paradise. Photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer.
By Tiffany Daneff Published
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'Nowadays, you can barely throw a heavy brick without it hitting a garden designer’: The renaissance of the country garden
Tiffany Daneff looks at how the English country house garden has been rescued from its thorny slumbers over the last 50 years.
By Tiffany Daneff Published
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: Ten things not to miss in what promises to be a superb year at the world's greatest horticultural show
It promises to be a stellar year at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Kathryn Bradley-Hole previews some of the highlights you can expect, while we take a look ahead to what Country Life will be up to during the week.
By Kathryn Bradley-Hole Published
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Four stands not to miss at the Chelsea Flower Show
Sponsored by Club Matters, Heritage Handmade Garden Collections, Rupert Till and Gladwell & Patterson
From wire sculptures to water features, oil paintings to tableware, take inspiration from the exhibitors at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show and liven up your home and garden, just in time for a–hopefully–glorious summer.
By Country Life Published
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Country Life May 14, 2025
Country Life 14 May 2025 celebrates summer gardens, previews the Chelsea Flower Show and delves in to the classic prawn cocktail.
By Country Life Published
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A new rose named after The Princess of Wales highlights our near-universal obsession with the flower
No flower is more entwined with myth, religion, politics and the human form than the humble rose.
By Amy de la Haye Last updated
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: The essential guide for first timers
The RHS has gone to great lengths to make the Chelsea Flower Show as fun and accessible for people of all gardening abilities. If you're planning to visit for the first time, here's everything you need to know.
By Tabi Jackson Gee Published
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Behind the secret garden door at 10, Downing Street
But don't expect to meet Larry the cat, or like him, for that matter.
By Annunciata Elwes Published
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: The first garden designed by a dog
Monty Don and his dog, Ned, have collaborated on a show garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show.
By Annunciata Elwes Published
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Testing times: Inside the RHS's Trials Garden at RHS Wisley
Nothing is so useful to the gardener as the plant trials that are quietly run by the RHS and judged by a specialist panel that publishes free reports available to all, suggests Charles Quest-Ritson.
By Charles Quest-Ritson Published
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Alan Titchmarsh: 'It’s all too easy to become swamped by the ‘to-do’ list, but give yourself a little time to savour the moment'
Easter is a turning point in the calendar, says Alan Titchmarsh, a 'clarion call' to 'get out there and sow and plant'.
By Alan Titchmarsh Published
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'I'd willingly give a year of my life for a fortnight there': The green dream that is the garden of Derreen
Exotic woods, labyrinths of narrow, mossy paths and thousands of tree ferns make this an internationally important garden, writes Charles Quest-Ritson. Photographs by Jonathan Hession.
By Charles Quest-Ritson Published
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Six of the best Clematis montanas that every garden needs
Clematis montana is easy to grow and look after, and is considered by some to be 'the most graceful and floriferous of all'.
By Charles Quest-Ritson Published
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Alan Titchmarsh: A foolproof guide to growing wisteria
If you've been enviously eyeing the extraordinary wisteria on display across Britain and wondering how you can grow your own, help is at hand. Alan Titchmarsh shares his advice for growing this most glorious of horticultural spectacles.
By Alan Titchmarsh Last updated
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The 'breathtakingly magnificent' English country gardens laid out on the Amalfi Coast, and the story of how they got there
Kirsty Fergusson follows the Grand Tour to Campania in Italy, where the English combined their knowledge and love of plants with the rugged landscape to create gardens of extraordinary beauty.
By Kirsty Fergusson Published
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Have your say in the Historic Houses Garden of the Year Awards 2025
By Annunciata Elwes Published
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Evenley Wood Garden: 'I didn't know a daffodil from a daisy! But being middle-aged, ignorant and obstinate, I persisted'
When Nicola Taylor took on her plantsman father’s flower-filled woodland, she knew more about horses than trees, but, as Tiffany Daneff discovers, that hasn’t stopped her from making a great success of the garden. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
By Tiffany Daneff Published
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An expert guide to growing plants from seed
All you need to grow your own plants from seed is a pot, some compost, water and a sheltered place.
By John Hoyland Published


