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.

CONTRIBUTORS

Welcome

THE ENGLISH GARDEN

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

Emma’s favourite gardens

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

Things to Do • Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Step by step PLANT A SUCCULENT CONTAINER • Drainage is key to helping succulents thrive, so use a gritty compost mix and then go to town with contrasting colours and shapes

Checklist

Nature to Note • The wonder of wildlife in the garden and countryside this month

All Wrapped Up • Our special selection of gifts to suit any budget will help you find the perfect presents for the garden lovers in your life this Christmas

When Less IS MORE • Stripped of summer’s blowsy delights, a winter garden can be admired for its spare structural beauty. Nowhere is this more evident than at Malverleys in Hampshire, when special details are picked out in frost

Off the SCALE • Anne Crawley worked with Chippenham Park’s historical landscaping and epic proportions to grand effect. Honed by her daughter and son-in-law, this Cambridgeshire estate’s monumental structure is best explored in the still of winter

Life LESSONS • At Denmans in West Sussex, the inimitable John Brookes created a garden filled with originality and wisdom. His legacy lives on with plenty of takeaways for eager visitors, not least the need to take your lead from nature and always to ask: “Do we like it?”

WINTER INTEREST at Denmans • Frosted foliage and ice-rimed flowers create subtle beauty during the year’s coldest months

Design MASTERCLASS • Do things the Denmans way, with garden design ideas inspired by the late John Brookes

Fashionably LATE • At Hatch House in Berkshire, the New Perennial-style garden has been designed by Tom Stuart-Smith specifically for autumn and winter, when form, colour and texture build to an exquisite late-season crescendo

The Topiary CHALLENGE • How Hatch House maintains its perfect box

Fire & ICE • The interplay of cool and warm tones, and light and shade, illuminates the intensely structural garden of The Down House in Hampshire, where the sustained efforts of Mark and Jackie Porter ensure winter is a continuing source of fascination

A recipe for fiery borders

BRINGING MAGIC TO LIFE • David Goode’s breathtakingly detailed bronze sculptures are inspired by his childhood love of folklore, fantasy, myth and legend, and will make a whimsical talking point in any garden

Winners Revealed • You voted in your thousands for the shortlisted entries in our competition to find the Nation’s Favourite Gardens. Here we announce the regional and overall winners

Let There Be Light • Brighten up even the very darkest days of winter, with Sarah Raven’s illuminating selection of plants that offer up a seasonal feast for the senses

Winter Roses • Hellebores are the floral stars of gardens in winter, when their distinctive blooms come to the fore

HOW TO GROW

Fruitful Marriage • Compact evergreen skimmias provide year-round interest and fragrant spring flowers. But for heaps of glossy berries at Christmas, be sure to plant male and female plants together

Success with skimmia • Keep these evergreen shrubs happy by making sure they’re planted in the...