Hash Rifai
Last week, Country Life made a triumphant return to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 with it's Italian loggia-inspired 'Outdoor Drawing Room'.
The tradestand was designed by interior designer Isabella Worsley and landscape designer Hugo Elwes — with support from Artorius Faber, Munder Skiles and Rose of Jericho.
The design and preparation process took months and in our behind-the-scenes video we reveal exactly how everything came together.
At Chelsea itself, we were delighted to meet as many readers as we did — as well as welcome new ones to the Country Life fold. We loved hearing about the parts of the magazine you look forward to most and who you share your copies with. Tearing everything down on the Saturday evening felt somewhat emotional, but we hope to see you back on the Royal Chelsea Hospital grounds next year.
Watch this space (and, of course, the video).
To celebrate Country Life's return to the Chelsea Flower Show, we're offering up to 40% off subscriptions to Country Life Magazine. It's our best offer ever; available until June 30, 2025
-
Alan Titchmarsh: 'I am so weary of seeing Lutyens-style benches and chairs absolutely everywhere'A strategically placed chair doubles as a focal point and a spot to rest — but we need to move on from Lutyens-style ones says our regular garden columnist.
-
Blurring the lines between ornament and recreation: Nine of Britain’s best Arts-and-Crafts swimming pondsBefore the vogue for bright blue, chlorine-treated swimming pools, members of Victorian and Edwardian society built naturalistic bathing ponds inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement.
-
Ballynure House: The magical estate that transformed its bramble-covered historic garden into a pollinator paradiseWhere brambles once engulfed the historic gardens at Ballynure House in Co Wicklow, Ireland — home of Clare Reid Scott — colourful flower borders now hum with pollinators. Photographs by Jonathan Hession.
-
Defanging the Gardens Trust will hurt our most precious landscapesThe Government has proposed to remove the Garden Trust's position as a statutory consultee in planning permissions for up to 1,700 historic landscapes and gardens in order to speed up building.
-
‘I was rather excited, not remotely daunted... With hindsight, I should have been': The 25-year creation of the gardens of Glenarm CastlePay a visit to the gardens at Glenarm Castle in Co Antrim — home of Randal and Aurora McDonnell — is hard to credit that nearly all of the present garden was made this century, marvels Kathryn Bradley-Hole. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
-
The pinnacle of the English style of gardening, as fine today as it was a century agoCharles Quest-Ritson has just returned to Great Dixter for the first time in years — and it's 'the high point of all my garden visiting for a long time. I cannot recommend it too highly'.
-
The curious incident of the vanishing glasshouses: Country Life's photographs are all that remains of these awe-inspiring structuresThe ‘winter garden’ and the ‘terraced grounds of exquisite beauty’ were two of Cherkley Court’s featured attractions. They were advertised for sale in Country Life in 1910 — and then they vanished.
-
Eat up your daylilies: The underappreciated east Asian flower that's a marvel in the kitchenMark Diacono was at first suspicious of cutting the stem of a gorgeous red daylily, until he realised how delicious they are.
