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 December

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 • In December, Jane Moore is thickly mulching the winter garden, lightly pruning trees and vines and gathering natural materials to make her Christmas wreaths

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

It’s The Most Wonderful Time

POMP & Circumstance • A family home with royal and political connections that has played an important national role through the centuries, Jacobean Hatfield House in Hertfordshire has suitably grand gardens shaped over generations

Winter’s PALETTE • Ruskin-trained artist in residence Francis Hamel uniquely captures the magical essence of Oxfordshire’s Rousham in glowing oil paints, and winter is the season when he finds the garden’s breathtaking structure laid enchantingly bare

Menu du Jour • This delectable West Sussex prairie garden has evolved to make best use of ingenious plant ingredients to repel a voracious local rabbit population

Where it BEGAN • Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst is a stalwart of the horticultural canon, but it was Long Barn in Kent where she cut her teeth and where traces of her instinctive genius live on under the stewardship of Rebecca Lemonius

The Constant GARDEN • Planted to provide something to look at on every single day of the year, Ivy Croft in Herefordshire is testament to the excellent taste of Roger Norman and his late wife, Sue, and is imbued with anticipation as the seasons change

THE BEST TOOLS TO BUY • Geoff Hodge and Alex Mitchell have been putting gardening tools through their paces for our website at theenglishgarden.co.uk. We round up their findings

Pillars of Support • For containers that look good even in deepest winter, Great Dixter’s Coralie Thomas suggests a central evergreen to act as the backbone of the display

A Double Vision • Verdant holly is one of winter’s great visual pleasures. Jonathan Webster, curator at RHS Garden Rosemoor, suggests doubling the joy with a variegated type that will shine through the gloom

A Bird’s Eye View • Look at your garden the way a bird would see it, and make the changes needed to provide food and habitat for our feathered friends. Sarah Raven offers practical advice on creating the ultimate bird-friendly garden

Bright Spots • Even in the darkest depths of winter these clever container arrangements will sparkle, continuing to charm and cheer throughout the season until spring arrives

Different Light • As Britain’s National Pinetum prepares to celebrate its centenary, Ambra Edwards explains why it’s high time to look at misunderstood conifers afresh

DIY CHRISTMAS • Celebrate the season in style with suggestions from the experts on how to dress a table, use garden foliage and dried flowers in arrangements, and bring in the best from the kitchen garden

The Big Apple • Entranced by the vast orbs of sweet cooking apple ‘Howgate Wonder’ for sale in Bury St Edmunds, Non Morris muses on some other very special varieties