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.

WELCOME

Only the Best Will Do • What separates Bloms Bulbs from other bulb suppliers? Brothers Paul and Chris Blom, who run the family business, say it’s the high quality of the bulbs and the collection they offer

The English Garden

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?”

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

Seasonal Pick-me-up • Sarcococca enliven the garden and provide an invaluable source of food for wildlife at a time of dormancy

HOW TO GROW

Perfect partners: Try these winter foliage plants for a tapestry of green

Houseplant HEALTHCARE • Garden Organic’s head of organic horticulture, Chris Collins, shares his advice on caring for your houseplants over the winter months

Checklist

LOOK Both Ways • Benington Lordship dates back to the 8th century and honours its timeless Hertfordshire landscape. Yet under the fourth generation of the Bott family, this tranquil garden with historic snowdrop plantings is slowly refreshing its outlook

Banish the Blues • Sweet smelling and early flowering, dainty Tazetta Group narcissi are a reminder that spring is on its way

HOW TO GROW

Perfect partners: Create a pretty early spring tableau with dainty blooms

Care for GRASSES • With grasses, knowing what to do when can be confusing. But it’s easy once you’ve established which are deciduous and which are evergreen

Checklist

HELLO SUNSHINE • Nothing says spring is on its way better than a throng of golden daffodils, and at Hever Castle in Kent there are 60,000 of them, old varieties and new, all maintained by Neil Miller and his team and gladdening the hearts of winter-weary visitors

NEIL’S TOP TEN DAFFODILS

Gold Standard • With its boughs laden with brilliant yellow blooms, forsythia earns its place as a spring garden stalwart

HOW TO GROW

Perfect partners: Plant these companions for a sunny spring scene

Spring SOWINGS • It’s the start of the year’s main seed-sowing season, beginning with easy hardy annuals which, sown now, will provide flowers this summer

Checklist

Going DUTCH • Florist Matthew Spriggs has applied the formality and containment of gardens seen on buying trips to the Netherlands to his narrow garden at Lancaster House in Sussex, with triumphant results and lots of bold tulips

Joys of SPRING • The new season brings a confection of colour to Matthew Spriggs’ West Sussex garden

Bread & Beyond • In the Victorian era camassia came to the UK, but their fascinating history takes us to North America

Perfect partners: A dusky planting scheme to complement camassia

Divide & CONQUER • Spring is the ideal time to divide certain herbaceous perennials to keep them healthy and vigorous and to increase your stocks of plants

Checklist

Circles Within CIRCLES • Using curving beds, alliums and box balls, Terry and Vanessa Winters have made a spherically inspired garden on tricky chalk soil at Ordnance House near Salisbury

Purple Prose • With its enchanting scent and plumes of gorgeous petals, little beats the lilac for sheer...