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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Welcome

The English Garden

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

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

Things to Do • As the garden begins surging towards its high-summer peak, Jane Moore is rushing to keep up with mulching, staking, filling gaps, watering and deadheading

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

Eat, Drink & Be Merry

Lanterns • A selection of six lanterns that will illuminate your garden with a warm, cosy glow and make balmy summer evenings even more enjoyable

Happy Place • Designer Sue Townsend has transformed overgrown apothecary beds into the centrepiece of this garden in the Berkshire countryside, now thoroughly enjoyed by Catrina Holme and her family, plus a range of wildlife

Peace of MIND • A haven of tranquillity in the gentle Wiltshire countryside, the abundant Arts & Crafts gardens at Great Chalfield Manor are more than a match for the mellow medieval building they surround and are designed to offer respite from a hectic world

Hearts & FLOWERS • Thriving within the walled kitchen garden at Stokesay Court in Shropshire is a flower business based on romance, where Victoria and Barney Martin grow exquisite flowers for florists and have built up a glowing reputation from scratch

Dream a Little DREAM • A relaxed jungly garden now at its blowsy summer peak, Glassmount House in Fife is a constant work in progress for plant-mad Irene Thomson who expands its boundaries inch by inch in a bid to make her dreams come true

Pure & SIMPLE • The clean and elegant design at Keeper’s Cottage in Suffolk with its sunken pool garden belies the hours of intricate thought put in by John Davies to make sense of a sloping site filled with complicated planning considerations

Open Minded • Jeremy and Trish Gibson are addicted to garden opening, and Badgworth Court Barn in Somerset is the third in a row they’ve opened for the National Garden Scheme, featuring a set route to lead visitors on a voyage of discovery

A Room of One’s Own • A garden room bridges the gap between indoors and out, offering a place to entertain, sleep, grow, store or while away the hours, and there’s a design to suit every style and shape of garden

Leading Lights • Brighten up shadowy corners of the garden with a selection of shade-loving foliage plants chosen by Blenheim Palace’s head gardener Andy Mills

Chorus Girls • The likes of lilac and philadelphus get all the glory, but for hardworking floriferous shrubs, you can’t go wrong with a deutzia. Andy McIndoe speaks to Robert Baker, who cares for the National Collection of Deutzia at The Hollies in Leeds

Perfect Partners • A selection of sun-loving plants that team up beautifully with the subtle peach-coloured flowerheads of Achillea ‘Salmon Beauty’

The Shape of Things To Come • Revamp your borders by employing the design trick of choosing contrasting flower shapes. Louise Curley selects some excellent candidates from each group

PICTURE PERFECT • Garden designer Nic Howard explains how to create borders in his signature style: a dreamy confection of mauves and purples

A PEOPLE PERSON •...