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 March

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 making plant supports for peonies, tidying up hydrangeas and sowing broad beans outdoors and annual seed under glass

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

Pot Shots • In late winter and early spring, containers provide an easy way to brighten dull corners both inside and out. Clipped all-green shrubs look chic, but for seasonal cheer fill them with pastel shades: think primroses, pulmonaria and wallflowers, and even potted supermarket bulbs such as hyacinths and narcissi. Malmesbury planter, from £40, gardentrading.co.uk.

Instant UPLIFT • The joys of spring have seldom been more in evidence than at Patricia Elkington’s naturalistic garden at Little Court in Hampshire, where bulbs and wildflowers combine to lift the spirits and raise a smile

Ahead of ITS TIME • Appearing at first glance to be the quintessential English garden, Steeple Manor in Dorset’s Purbeck Hills is a rare early work by one of Britain’s most innovative Modernists, the pioneering Brenda Colvin, and is filled with her clever flourishes

A Life of ITS OWN • At Bates Green Garden in East Sussex, the light of its late creator, talented plantswoman Carolyn McCutchan, shines on, her life’s work restored, replenished and revitalised by head gardener Emma Reece

What Friends ARE FOR • The choice plants at John Morley’s garden at North Green Snowdrops in Suffolk result from his close collaboration with horticultural confidants such as Sir Cedric Morris and Primrose Warburg, and it’s now a living tribute to those passed

First BREATH • Early spring is a very special time of year at Devon’s Mothecombe House, when new life suffuses its awakening 14 acres with fresh colour from magnolias, camellias and swathes of spring bulbs

Mountain High • At Holehird in the Lake District, Alan Oatway looks after the glasshouse alpine collection and here suggests ten easygoing specimens for your own garden

Model Looks • With their lovely waxen blooms, camellias are the glamorous stars of the spring garden. Borde Hill in West Sussex is home to a historic collection, and head of horticulture Harry Baldwin has a range of spectacular specimens to recommend

Cultivating Camellias • With the right soil and planting preparation, you’ll be rewarded with a gorgeous display

TEACH BY EXAMPLE • At Norwell Nurseries in Nottinghamshire, Andrew and Helen Ward offer a masterclass in growing for tricky conditions, with the beautiful plants they sell showcased in sand, shade, frost and heavy clay in their own on-site garden

The Golden HOUR • Across the country a host of golden daffodils is emerging to greet us this month. A visit to flower farm Hortus Poeticus in Surrey, where these sunny spring blooms grow in abundance, gives us all the inspiration we need to celebrate the daffodil in all its glory

Shed Essentials • Whether you’re installing a new shed from scratch or upgrading an existing structure, there are plenty of ways to maximise its use and your enjoyment

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