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 August

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 dahlia selections, weeding paths, collecting lavender for scented bundles and taking cuttings from short-lived perennials

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

Keep Your Cool • While gardens are at their most appealing in summer, weeks of scorching temperatures can take their toll. Constant watering is neither the best nor the most sustainable option to keep things green, so a sturdy water butt to collect rainwater is a sensible investment.

The Test OF TIME • Gardening is in Claire Austin’s blood, but at her parents’ former home of White Hopton Farm in Powys, the garden is a laboratory where she experiments with plants to weave ever-changing combinations

The Pleasure PRINCIPLE • It’s taken time for Lucy Bartlett to shape the 11-acre blank canvas at Suffolk’s Polstead Mill to her personal tastes, but she’s been motivated by her goal of creating a special space for enjoyment and relaxation

Here be DRAGONS • Myth and magic combine at the ancient Bishop’s Palace in Wells where a tapestry of rich planting fills the gardens and surrounds the spring-fed moats, presided over by an infamous figure from folklore

Better NATURE • Innovative, naturalistic planting is the order of the day at the Aldourie Estate on the shores of Loch Ness where a visionary Tom Stuart-Smith design is maintained by head gardener Elliott Forsyth

Heaven ON SEA • A much longed for dream of a beautiful garden on the Suffolk coast has come true for Sue Pearson thanks to the inspirational work of Sue Townsend, whose design flair and colourful, drought-tolerant planting links the space to the seaside charms of the wider landscape

Perfect Form • Finding the ideal piece of outdoor sculpture to suit your space requires careful research. Try visiting art in situ at a number of sculpture gardens around the country to inspire you in your quest for beauty

Directory • Sculptors and suppliers of outdoor art in the mediums of stone, wood, metal and resin

Summer Hot Pots • Plant up drought-tolerant containers that will withstand summer’s heat with ten plant suggestions from Shaun Blower, who works in Great Dixter’s nursery

Airs & Graces • From dainty alpines and ground-hugging shade-lovers to towering border perennials, thalictrums’ gauzy flowerheads add a see-through effect to borders, making them one of summer’s most alluring plants

Standards Deliver • If you’re seeking to add elegance, structure, formality or a definitive sense of intention to your garden, topiary standards are the answer. Find expert advice on choosing the right variety, buying and shaping it, for instant sophistication

Notes from PERCH HILL • In the third of four extracts adapted from her new book, A Year Full of Veg, Sarah Raven is focused on high-summer crops of tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and courgettes

Do the CHARLESTON • Once the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and the epicentre of Bloomsbury Group gatherings, Charleston in Sussex is now a museum set in...