Country Life March 12, 2025

cover of Country Life 12 March 2025 — The cover of Country Life's 12 March 2025 issue, featuring The Garden Hall at Pitshill House, West Sussex, as photographed by Paul Whitbread.

(Image credit: Future)

Country Life 12 March 2025, our annual Top 100 interiors special, featured the best country house architects, interior designers, crafts people and garden experts in Britain.

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside:

The Country Life Top 100

Giles Kime and Amelia Thorpe profile the leading country-house experts with a track record for excellence in architecture, interior design, landscaping and more

Water you wading for?

The village pond, once the hub around which community life revolved, is being reinvented as a ‘superpower’ habitat for rare species, finds Vicky Liddell

Sorry seems to be the easiest word

Deborah Nicholls-Lee makes no apology for asking why there is nothing more British than saying sorry (up to eight times a day, we regret to say)

Two’s company, three’s a crowd farmer

Jane Wheatley is impressed by a new European project linking farmers direct to consumers in an effort to ensure fair pricing

Peak sugar

Harry Pearson is sweet on Kendal Mint Cake, the original energy snack that is still going strong after conquering Everest and crossing the Antarctic

Arts & antiques

Nature’s beauty and vulnerability are laid bare in a new exhibition at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, as Carla Passino discovers

Josh Eggleton’s favourite painting

The chef and restaurant owner chooses a contemporary collage that keeps the viewer guessing

Like cats on a hot tin roof

A feline stand-off in a Wiltshire farmyard has echoes of tax and trade talks for Minette Batters

Gothic splendours

John Goodall hails the rebirth of Victorian gem Allerton Castle in North Yorkshire, some two decades after a devastating fire

The legacy

Kate Green lauds the brilliant, but tragically brief blooming of cello prodigy Jacqueline du Pré

The red army

Ian Morton reveals why we don’t want wood ants in our pants

The good stuff

Pretty pastels are back for spring, so think pink, says Hetty Lintell

Bring me everlasting flowers

Catriona Gray meets a man crafting blooms from coppiced hazel

If you want colour…

Picture-perfect primulas offer an easy way to festoon the garden with a kaleidoscope of colour, suggests Charles Quest-Ritson

Foraging

John Wright savours the peppery crunch and kick of black mustard, but he’ll never pick it in Yeovil

It’s a Scream

The wild work of Edvard Munch betrayed a troubled soul, but the Norwegian artist found salvation in Nature, declares Jessica Lack

And much more

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by His Majesty The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.