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 spring

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 celebrates the arrival of the first spring blossom, plants native woodlanders and considers the very specific requirements of parsley

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

Lay the Groundwork • Behind every magnificent border display is a gardener who has rolled up their sleeves. A plan has been drawn up, ground has been broken and plants have been added. An easier way, but just as creative, is to use striking containers to play with textures and plant pairings. Two handmade column planters – beige, £195. Tel: 0330 3332123; coxandcox.co.uk

PLAY & Display • Good design can be playful as well as beautiful and a sense of fun permeates this small but multi-layered Clapham garden, created by Filippo Dester, with its basement slide, bespoke playhouse and a focus on dense planting and views

Little ENGLAND • This tiny patch in South East London has been reworked by Will Jennings into an abundant and classically English garden, brimming with romantic roses and cottage-style treats, with space to sit back and enjoy it all

Acts of ENCLOSURE • Over 50 years, Vicki and Michael Reid-Thomas have added shelterbelt planting and layers of terracing to the formerly windswept garden of their home at Riccarton Mains near Edinburgh, to create a series of peaceful havens

Out of THE BOX • For designer Tabi Jackson Gee, some very creative thinking was required to free a tiny, square, high-walled London courtyard, making it into an engaging but robustly low-maintenance outdoor living space for its young owner

Flower BOMB • Prepare yourself for an immersive cottage-garden spectacular at Staffordshire’s Grafton Cottage, where wave after wave of carefully coordinated colour keeps on coming all spring and summer

Time’s TAPESTRY • Near London Bridge, an area with a rich and varied history, Tony Woods has used modern techniques to revolutionise a tired inner-city plot, upcycling existing plants and weaving in special touches as a nod to the area’s past

SMALL COMFORT • Discover a range of compact but stylish outdoor furniture options that will maximise space and allow you to dine and relax comfortably in even the littlest garden

Cups of Joy • With their huge goblet-shaped blooms, magnolias are one of the delights of the spring garden. Jaimie Parsons of the Caerhays Estate has ten to recommend

The Sweet Scent of Spring • This season, enjoy the gorgeous fragrance and abundant retro charms of a lilac, with expert advice from The Gobbett Nursery

Mind the Gap • At that time of year when spring is drawing to a close but summer is yet to hit full stride, gardens may look a little bare. Brighten things up – and provide for pollinators – by focusing on early-summer-flowering biennials, annuals and perennials to fill the gap

TRADE SECRETS: Dahlia Cuttings • In the first of a new series of masterclasses explaining useful gardening techniques, David Hall, of Halls of Heddon, offers his expert advice on taking cuttings from dahlias to help you increase...