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Hampnett House: A Gloucestershire garden where an empty, squelchy lawn has been replaced by 'gorgeous flowery generosity'
What to do if you inherit a garden that isn’t your style? Tiffany Daneff visits the garden at Hampnett House, Gloucestershire — home of Mr Sanjeev Shah and Ms Mansi Amin — and finds a space that has undergone a major transformation, from high-concept minimalism to flower-filled paradise. Photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer.
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'Nowadays, you can barely throw a heavy brick without it hitting a garden designer’: The renaissance of the country garden
Tiffany Daneff looks at how the English country house garden has been rescued from its thorny slumbers over the last 50 years.
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: Ten things not to miss in what promises to be a superb year at the world's greatest horticultural show
It promises to be a stellar year at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Kathryn Bradley-Hole previews some of the highlights you can expect, while we take a look ahead to what Country Life will be up to during the week.
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Four stands not to miss at the Chelsea Flower Show
Sponsored by Club Matters, Heritage Handmade Garden Collections, Rupert Till and Gladwell & Patterson
From wire sculptures to water features, oil paintings to tableware, take inspiration from the exhibitors at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show and liven up your home and garden, just in time for a–hopefully–glorious summer.
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10 outstanding British gardens from the Country Life Archive
With Chelsea Flower Show is on the horizon, we've mined the 128-year-old Country Life Archives for 10 inspiring gardens from across our Isles.
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A new rose named after The Princess of Wales highlights our near-universal obsession with the flower
No flower is more entwined with myth, religion, politics and the human form than the humble rose.
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: The essential guide for first timers
The RHS has gone to great lengths to make the Chelsea Flower Show as fun and accessible for people of all gardening abilities. If you're planning to visit for the first time, here's everything you need to know.
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: The first garden designed by a dog
Monty Don and his dog, Ned, have collaborated on a show garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show.
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Alan Titchmarsh: 'It’s all too easy to become swamped by the ‘to-do’ list, but give yourself a little time to savour the moment'
Easter is a turning point in the calendar, says Alan Titchmarsh, a 'clarion call' to 'get out there and sow and plant'.
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'I'd willingly give a year of my life for a fortnight there': The green dream that is the garden of Derreen
Exotic 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.
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Six of the best Clematis montanas that every garden needs
Clematis montana is easy to grow and look after, and is considered by some to be 'the most graceful and floriferous of all'.
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Alan Titchmarsh: A foolproof guide to growing wisteria
If you've been enviously eyeing the extraordinary wisteria on display across Britain and wondering how you can grow your own, help is at hand. Alan Titchmarsh shares his advice for growing this most glorious of horticultural spectacles.
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The man who trekked Bhutan, Mongolia, Japan, Tasmania and New Zealand to bring the world's greatest magnolias back to Kent
Magnolias 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.
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The 'breathtakingly magnificent' English country gardens laid out on the Amalfi Coast, and the story of how they got there
Kirsty 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.
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Have your say in the Historic Houses Garden of the Year Awards 2025
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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.
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An expert guide to growing plants from seed
All you need to grow your own plants from seed is a pot, some compost, water and a sheltered place.
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Great Comp: The blissful garden flooded with rhododendrons and azaleas that's just beyond the M25
Each 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.
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The best garden and landscape designers in Britain
A great country house is as much about its surroundings as its architecture and interiors, something that the best landscape designers and garden designers in Britain understand. We've revised and updated our list of the finest of them all, with four new entries for 2025.
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'I'm the expert who wrote the RHS's guide to roses — here's why pruning them right now is almost certainly a terrible mistake'
More roses die from over-pruning than any other cause so what’s the reasoning underpinning this horticultural habit? Charles Quest-Ritson, the garden expert who wrote the RHS Encyclopedia of Roses, takes a closer look.
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Forsythia: The spring flower that's a ray of sunshine — and a foolproof option for novice gardeners
Forsythia are often sniffed at for being too brassy, but there is a lot more going for them, says Charles Quest-Ritson, although don’t plant them next to clashing pink-flowering currants.
