The English Garden

Enjoy over 60 beautiful gardens a year with The English Garden. Every issue features country, city, cottage and coastal gardens, with advice on how to recreate them. Be inspired by articles written by the country's top garden designers and discover the best plant varieties for your garden, chosen by expert nurserymen and plantspeople.

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The English Garden

This Month • Our guide to plants, people, gardens and events, tasks and shopping in September

People to Meet • Introducing the gardeners and public figures we most admire in British horticulture

Out & About • Unmissable events, news and the very best gardens to visit this month

Jim’s Garden Diary • This month, Jim Cable is balancing cultivated colour with native wildflower meadowmats, propagating shrubs by layering and ordering exotic spring bulbs

Beautiful & Useful • New plants, books, tools and creative designs, plus shopping inspiration

A Bug’s Life • Crickets chirping, bees buzzing, and the gentle flutter of butterfly wings: the garden symphony is at its finest in summertime. Be inspired by their activity and host a lively lunch with an insect-themed tablescape. A linen runner featuring a pretty bee print is the perfect place to start.

A CHANGE Of Course • No good garden remains static, and at grand old Chatsworth in Derbyshire, Tom Stuart-Smith has been enlisted to revamp the venerable Rock Garden and other key areas to keep them fresh and enticing while respecting the thrilling Victorian design

After GLOW • Once the hard graft of a busy summer at his nursery, Pelham Plants in East Sussex, is over, Paul Seaborne can enjoy the clouds of colour and light in his private garden, Rose Cottage, which is designed for an autumn zenith

Served with A TWIST • At The Beeches in East Sussex, a walled garden keeps the B&B’s guests well supplied with treats, while owner Sandy Coppen constantly comes up with new ways to improve the unimprovable

GOLDEN AGE • The garden at Kent’s Doddington Place is one that has grown into itself, its confident Edwardian structure enhanced and refreshed over time

A View To A THRILL • North meets South at the inventive gardens of Yewbarrow House on the Cumbrian Coast, where truly tropical planting thrives despite the rigours of the climate, offset by one of the most tremendous views in the North West

Vote for your Favourites • We’ve counted your nominations to produce a shortlist of 28 in our competition to find the nation’s favourite gardens. Now vote to help us select the winners

Beat around the Bush • Garden designer, horticultural consultant and author Andy McIndoe waxes lyrical on one of his favourite subjects – shrubs – and reveals his ten favourites

Child’s Play • Easy to grow from seed and with appealingly simple daisy shapes, cheerful cosmos are an enduringly popular annual, as Plant Heritage National Collection holder Jonathan Sheppard explains

Connoisseurs’ Choice • The gorgeous nursery at Holden Clough in the Ribble Valley is a plantsperson’s dream. Here owner John Foley explains how the business constantly evolves to meet discerning customers’ needs

BACK TO SCHOOL • Whether you want to improve existing skills or launch a new career, September is the perfect month to take a course to set you on your chosen path. Vivienne Hambly looks at what’s on offer and talks to horticultural professionals about their own learning and development

Saving Grace • It’s sapphire celebrations for Plant Heritage, a charity that has spent 45 years meticulously conserving garden plants. Clare Foggett speaks to its National Plant Collection holders and Plant Guardians, who help safeguard variety and diversity

Set in Time • Preserve evocative memories of...