The 10 best shrubs for your garden, by the legendary gardener who’s dedicated his life to them
The revered gardener Peter Catt has bred and grown some of the finest shrubs in Britian. He told Val Bourne about his ten favourites.
Alan Titchmarsh: A foolproof guide to growing wisteria
The plant might not be evergreen, but Alan's advice for how to make it thrive certainly is.
The ultimate guide to planting your own orchard
‘Getting it right is easy,' explains Mark Diacono. 'Sadly, so is getting it wrong.’
The best garden designers and landscapers in Britain
Not all garden designers understand that a country house and its surroundings must work in harmony. Here's our list of the very best who do.
Kylemore Abbey Gardens: An Irish garden that ‘is one of earth’s wonders’
Last winter's lockdown was still in force when we ran this piece telling the story of the determination of the resident community of Benedictine nuns and their eight-acre garden at Kylemore Abbey Gardens in Connemara, Ireland.
Your month-by-month checklist of what to do in the garden and when
Simply brilliant advice, given to us by Becky Crowley, formerly in charge of the cutting garden at Chatsworth.
Japanese Acers: The ultimate guide to what to grow, how to grow it and the best acer varieties for your garden
We're delighted to see how well-received this piece was — we've a true soft-spot for these most delicately pretty of trees.
Monty Don: The point of gardening
It’s to find solace, to be happy, to make beauty, have fun and muck about. How you do it doesn’t matter.' Monty's interview actually wentup on the site in late 2020, yet was still being read many months later.
The best herbs to grow in your garden aren’t the ones you use the most. Here’s why.
I recently moved to a new garden,' says Mark Diacono in this piece. 'Thankfully, it came with a house attached.' Now that's the mark of a true gardener.
Drummond Castle Gardens in winter: The winter beauty of the gardens made famous by Outlander
In the depths of winter at Drummond Castle is a garden made famous by the Outlander TV series. Caroline Donald told its story, with wonderful pictures by Clive Nichols.
Monty Don: How to stop worrying and learn to love gardening in November
November can be a depressing time for gardeners – but not if you dive in and make the best of it,
Credit: Getty Images
Carla Carlisle: 'I’m about to expand on my belief that reading fertilises our memories and allows us to visit our past without getting hurt when I see her eyes wander off towards Monty Don'
Books create a powerful connection with the home of your youth, finds Carla Carlisle.
The Gardens at The Manor, Priors Marston: A house bought on a same-day impulse that became a 20-year labour of love
The inspiration for the garden of The Manor, Priors Marston, Warwickshire, was to create a landscape to meander through, with
Carla Carlisle: 'I felt a surge of gratitude and hopefulness that’s hard to describe. You could call it Thanksgiving.'
A visit to St Paul's Cathedral provokes a flood of feelings in Carla Carlisle.
Arthur Parkinson: 'It’s a crime that we have forsaken our wildflower meadows for petrol lawnmowers and Flymos'
-
Hide from your hay fever in a larch-clad Passive House in Surrey designed by an award-winning architectHeron House might cost more than a pack of Piriteze, but it does come with three bedrooms and you'll save a fortune on bills.
-
Pamela Anderson, jellyfish and Mary Poppins feature in Country Life's Quiz of the Day, August 5, 2025Tuesday's quiz asks how well you remember some very famous song lyrics and plumbs your knowledge of the actress.
-
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side: Five alternatives to lawn, from fleshy sedums to aromatic thymeNo Mow May and similar initiatives want to inspire gardeners to replace their lawns with pollinator-friendly alternatives — but knowing where to start and what to do is an off-putting minefield.
-
What everyone's talking about this week: It's time to follow in the footsteps of King’s College, Cambridge, and kiss the lawnmower goodbyeWeek in, week out, Will Hosie rounds up the hottest topics on everyone's lips, in London and beyond.
-
The rose that flowers 'from October to summer', and the man who used it to light up a beautiful corner of LondonGeorge Plumptre pays tribute to the late Roger Phillips, whose seminal book on trees has been updated almost 50 years after its initial publication.
-
'Other people would have given up and turfed half of it over': The couple who turned 'the ugliest house with the nicest view' into a Somerset treasureWith many viewpoints and changes of level, Grove Ley in Somerton, Somerset — home of Dr and Mrs Michael Horder — was not an easy site on which to make a garden. But key to its success, writes Caroline Donald, has been enlarging the pond and creating long beds full of robust perennials and grasses. Photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer.
-
Isabel Bannerman: Gardens fade in the heat of high-summer, but it's still possible to plant pockets of joy in shaded spacesThis is traditionally the time of powdery daisies caked in sun, but our writer craves a 'spritz' more likely found among shade-loving plants in damp-holding places.
-
'I blitzed it. Nothing survived. If you have one bit of surviving bindweed, you will have it forever’: A peek in to the ruthless world of the gravel gardenSince they appeared in the 1990s, gravel gardens have grown in popularity, especially in recent years. What are the keys for success? Non Morris asks some of Britain's top experts in the field, from the brutal work needed to get started through to the plants that only work 'if you get rid of soil entirely'.
-
Why a love of gardening will get us all in the endWhen it comes to gardening, resistance is futile — especially if you're British — so it's best to give into it and get on with it.
-
A lush, 'tropical' garden in Devon where bananas and ginger grow happily alongside the staples of an English country gardenSteep inclines and rocky outcrops are nothing to the owners of this coastal garden, which is filled with plants-many from the southern hemisphere-that thrive in such conditions, finds Caroline Donald.
