Great Comp, Kent
As featured on the Country Life website last week, this gem of a garden just outside the M25 is beautiful all year round, but all the more so in spring.
Leonardslee, West Sussex
The Loderi Garden — like Great Comp, also featured recently in Country Life — has the world’s most complete collection of Loderi hybrid rhododendrons, bred by Leonardslee’s former owner, Sir Edmund Loder, from 1901. Some plants in the collection are more than 100 years old.
Ramster Gardens, Surrey
Rhododendrons were a passion of the Hon Florence Priscilla McLaren, known as Lady Norman, who lived at Ramster from 1922. Many of the large rhododendrons were planted in the 1920s and 1930s, some with russet trunks now stretching to 20ft in height.
Sheringham Park, Norfolk
The gardens of Sheringham Hall, Norfolk.
The 50-acre Wild Garden at Sheringham is home to a nationally important collection of rhododendrons. The ‘carpet of colour’ can be admired from two viewing platforms, but gargantuan lemon-coloured rhododendron macabeanum, tucked away from the path network, are well worth a diversion.
Trewithen Gardens, Cornwall
A traditional Cornish woodland garden with a strong bias toward spring flowering plants, many of plant hunter origin. Rhododendrons, interspersed with Asiatic magnolias, flank the huge serpentine lawn and signal the arrival of spring, best between February and July.
Scotney Castle, Kent
When spring arrives, the Main Lawns and Lime Walk are swamped by their mauve-pink blooms. A sea of rhododendrons flood the sloping valley, cascading from Dell Garden down to the moat, where ruins of the 14th-century castle emerge from below.
Glendoick Gardens, Scotland
The rhododendron nursery was established in 1953, filled with seeds of wild species collected on plant-hunting expeditions. Today, it is the site of a project to create hybrid species that will withstand rising temperatures.
Exbury Gardens, Hampshire
This rhododendron haven was begun by Lionel de Rothschild in 1919. Three generations, thousands of bulbs, and more than 1,000 hybrids later, the collection is world-famous, at its best in May.
Borde Hill, Haywards Heath
With a legacy that includes the first Chinese rhododendrons to be introduced to Britain, flowers from seeds collected by 19th-century plant hunters, and the place where Col. Stephenson Robert Clarke began his rhododendron collection in earnest, The Old Rhododendron Garden promises a bounty of history and blooms.
Bowood Garden, Wiltshire
The Woodland Garden, laid out by the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne in 1854 and open for six weeks during the flowering season (mid-April to early June), is home to hundreds of rare and hybrid rhododendron species, with two miles of meandering paths to enjoy them.
RHS Garden Rosemoor, Devon
Good throughout the season, but head for the National Rhododendron Show (April 26-27) and you'll see exhibitors from all of the south and west of England gather for a special event, showcasing magnificent displays and a programme of classes, trade and advice stands, and competitions. Entry included in garden admission, from £14.50.
-
Athena: We need to get serious about saving our museumsThe government announced that museums ‘can now apply for £20 million of funding to invest in their future’ last week. But will this be enough?
-
Six rural properties with space, charm and endless views, as seen in Country LifeWe take a look at some of the best houses to come to the market via Country Life in the past week.
-
'I'd willingly give a year of my life for a fortnight there': The green dream that is the garden of DerreenExotic 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.
-
Six of the best Clematis montanas that every garden needsClematis montana is easy to grow and look after, and is considered by some to be 'the most graceful and floriferous of all'.
-
The man who trekked Bhutan, Mongolia, Japan, Tasmania and New Zealand to bring the world's greatest magnolias back to KentMagnolias don't get any more magnificent than the examples in the garden at White House Farm in Kent, home of Maurice Foster. Many of them were collected as seed in the wild — and they are only one aspect of his enthralling garden.
-
The 'breathtakingly magnificent' English country gardens laid out on the Amalfi Coast, and the story of how they got thereKirsty 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.
-
Have your say in the Historic Houses Garden of the Year Awards 2025 -
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.
-
An expert guide to growing plants from seedAll you need to grow your own plants from seed is a pot, some compost, water and a sheltered place.
-
Great Comp: The blissful garden flooded with rhododendrons and azaleas that's just beyond the M25Each spring, Great Comp Garden — just outside the M25, near Sevenoaks — erupts into bloom, with swathes of magnolias, azaleas and rhododendrons. Charles Quest-Ritson looks at what has become one of the finest gardens to visit in Kent.
