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The Country Life Top 100 architects, interior designers, garden designers, landscape designers and country house specialists in BritainIt's nine years since the original Country Life Top 100 was published, but the aim hasn't changed: we name the very best architects, interior designers, craftsmen, builders and garden designers in Britain.
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The garden at Cogshall Grange: 'A modern work of art, combining shapeliness and serenity'Layers of fresh new foliage — lime-green hornbeams underplanted with bronze and copper-leaved perennials — are set off with a brilliant selection of tulips in the garden at Cogshall Grange. Kathryn Bradley-Hole paid a visit; photography by Clive Nichols.
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The Italians think it's a laxative and the Germans say it leeches your bones, but rhubarb is a true British wonder. Here's how to do it justiceRhubarb is one of the easiest and most generous plants to grow. Charles Quest-Ritson digs into its history and recommends the best kinds; photographs by Jonathan Buckley.
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I pitted AI against a much-loved 1963 gardening book to see what to do with my little corner of Ireland — here's what happenedOur columnist Jonathan Self has relied on his old gardening books for decades. Can a newcomer in the form of Claude AI take their place?
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Where was Guy Ritchie's Young Sherlock series filmed? In a historic Welsh home that first appeared in Country Life a century agoLlanvihangel Court has a Spanish Armada-era avenue of trees and may have been visited by Charles I. To celebrate its star turn in Guy Ritchie's new Amazon Prime television series, 'Young Sherlock', we're revisiting our feature and photographs on the house that first appeared in the magazine in 1916.
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Ancient time-telling devices — turned garden ornaments — from the Country Life ArchiveMan has been consumed by time and how to tell it for millennia. Sundials are an important part of this history and there are plenty of pictures of them — in some of Britain's most beautiful gardens — hiding in the Country Life Archive.
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'If the Chelsea Flower Show is the glitzy public face of British gardening, then the country’s amateur flower shows encapsulate its older, gentler side'Christopher Stocks looks at the origins of the local flower show while Steven Desmond provides his advice on how to secure victory.
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In search of the perfect country house games roomA country house is never truly complete without a games room. Julie Harding picks out her favourites on the market right now.
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'There was the land, the money and the desire to show off both': The incomparable skill and immaculate timing of Capability BrownTiffany Daneff pays tribute to Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, the great landscape gardener who re-shaped huge swathes of Britain.
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Swap out the chintz for corduroy: How to create a calming and characterful country retreatThe owners of this 19th century cottage turned to Studio Squire for a quick and comprehensive renovation.
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I'm a tulip in a bottle, baby: A very British botanical beauty contest is gaining fans of all agesLaunched by Matthew Rice to publicise his local gardening club, the annual Tulip in a Bottle contest is popular with everyone, finds Tiffany Daneff.
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Sarah Raven: ‘I find nature very inspiring and reassuring, when things are feeling a bit dire in the world and we have world wars’The gardener and writer on her love of Cretan wild flowers, why she quit her job as a doctor, her husband’s grandmother Vita Sackville-West — and her consuming passions.
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Growing leeks: What to plant, when to to it, and how to make them thriveOur grow-your-own expert Mark Diacono shares his favourite leeks.
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The best garden designers and landscape specialists in BritainA garden or landscape that's in harmony with the buildings within it is one of the great joys of life — and something that the landscape designers and garden designers on our list of the best in Britain understand.
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The best country house specialists in Britain, from artists, stonemasons and joiners to builders and paint specialistsThere's been a huge amount of change among the specialists listed in the Country Life Top 100 for 2026. These are the inspiring people and companies which made it.
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A cheat's guide to bulbous irises and top tips for growing themIsabel Bannerman is bewitched and bewildered by bulbous irises.
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The best interior designers in BritainThe classic English Country House style is perennially popular. Here's our pick of the best interior designers in Britain, fully revised and updated for 2026.
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Colour photographs of Gertrude Jekyll’s garden, rediscovered in the Country Life Archive, offer a rare glimpse of what it looked like at the peak of her fameIn 1997, Country Life published a set of chromatic photographs of Gertrude Jekyll’s Munstead Wood garden that had lain undisturbed in our archive for nearly a century. We have reproduced the pictures, corresponding feature and captions here.
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How do you make an 18th century stately home fit for a 21st-century family?Grace McCloud talks to Toddy Fleming of Studio Cameron about gently updating The Hirsel — a Category A Listed stately home on land in the Scottish Borders that's been occupied by the same family for nearly a millennium.
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A dream built in glass, for herbs, flowers and 'lots of fancy tomatoes'Gentle curves ensure that this greenhouse fits seamlessly into the corner of an Oxfordshire garden, finds Tiffany Daneff. Photography by Clive Nichols.
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No garden should be without a winter-flowering daphne, so we've picked the bestThere is no such thing as a disappointing daphne, Charles Quest-Ritson
