The sweet pea, of rustic appearance and harmonious colour range, is one of the distinctive pleasures of high summer in the garden. Grown on the cordon system and kept picked, they will continue to yield for weeks. Like any cut flower, they need to be constantly looked over and attended to, just for a few minutes each evening. This means cutting the magnificently fragrant flowers regularly, otherwise they will readily go to seed, and the plants' lifecycle will soon be over. This is the sort of gentle pottering, little and often, of which so much good gardening is made.
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21 of the greatest craftspeople working in Britain today, as chosen by the nation's best designers and architectsWe've persuaded some of the most celebrated names from our Country Life Top 100 to name the craftspeople they have in their own personal little black books.
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The garden created by a forgotten genius of the 1920s, rescued from 'a sorry state of neglect to a level of quality it has not known for over 50 years'George Dillistone’s original Arts-and-Crafts design at Knowle House, East Sussex, has been lovingly restored and updated with contemporary planting. George Plumptre tells more; photography by Clive Nichols.
