Darren Hawkes is back at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to celebrate the Samaritans’ 70th anniversary with a Listening Garden I trained to be an actor and while resting between jobs and auditions I did a variety of different part-time work. A friend was

Hosted at the Three Counties Showground, the theme of the festival this year is ‘Gardening for Everyone’. Alongside beautiful show gardens offering planting and design inspiration is the floral marquee where top quality plants from hand-selected nurs

Ideal for garden beds, larger containers or growing as a low hedge, Escallonia ‘Showstopper’ is a brand new plant you might have started seeing in garden centres. Bred by Wyevale Nurseries, it’s smaller than classic ‘Peach Blossom’ and ‘Apple Blossom

Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire is not a big place – just a few houses, two old churches and a pub believed to date back to the early 16th-century. Yet despite its size, this tiny village is also home to not one but two spectacular gardens, both wi

May in the English countryside is a lesson in green. From cow parsley-lined lanes to clouds of hawthorn, it’s an edge-of-anarchy rush of new life and leafy abundance. Translating this profusion into a garden setting is a fearsome challenge. Something

Nestled in a woodland clearing at the foothills of the Cleveland Hills in North Yorkshire, Mount Grace Priory is a magical place. It has a history that spans nearly 650 years: an imposing manor house, which was redeveloped at the turn of the 20th-cen

At Forest Lodge in May, the steps leading down through the garden are flushed purple as Campanula portenschlagiana, the wall bellflower, which is seeded into the smallest joints and cracks of the stonework, blooms its heart out. This three-acre garde

With its tile-hung walls and tall chimney stacks, the 16th-century cottage at Copyhold Hollow is the stuff of fairytales, made all the more enchanting for its wooded backdrop. Set back from a quiet West Sussex lane, it sits at the bottom of a steep s

Marysa and Graeme Norris moved from London to Suffolk in 2011. When they began house-hunting, Graeme said he didn’t mind where they lived as long as it was not in the flatland of Suffolk! “But what delighted us about Suffolk was the wide-open skies a

Building one of the most highly anticipated Show Gardens of Chelsea 2023, Cleve West returns to the show after seven years with the Centrepoint Garden. The focal point, a part-demolished Victorian house where nature begins to colonise the rubble, is

Not far from the River Spey in Morayshire, Scotland, the restored eight-acre walled garden at Gordon Castle includes an orchard, cut flowers, vegetables and soft fruit. “The climate in the north of Scotland is perfect for growing soft fruit and almos

It would be easy to assume that astrantias, with their mass of dainty pincushion flowers held above mounds of soft foliage, are less than hardy or require special attention, but that could not be further from the truth. Their delicate appearance beli

Early in the month there’s not much in the way of produce to bring into the kitchen, but within a week or two things start looking up. We now have plenty of rhubarb, new salad leaves and the lettuce that was sown in March, along with an array of herb

She travelled through Europe, eloped with a married man, and worked as a librarian in Cairo in the 1940s. But when the adventurous Elizabeth David returned to the austerity of post-war Britain, she realised one very particular thing: British food was

Spring is here and with it an opportunity to add plants to improve your borders – although do remember to keep watering any new additions, particularly if the summer is hot and dry. One of the joys of gardening is this process of constant review as w

Anyone who has visited southern or south-eastern Europe is likely to have walked across a stone mosaic pavement at some point on their travels. Embellished with swirls and geometric designs in contrasting light and dark stone, pebble mosaics were use

Stepping into the Suffolk churchyard of St Bartholomew’s, Orford in May is like stepping into a dream. The handsome 14th-century church rises gently from a hazy sea of cow parsley. Nestled among the lacy flowerheads are fleets of pinkish-grey gravest

Immediately to the east of the great mansion of Castle Howard in North Yorkshire rises a small wooded hill. This is Ray Wood, a place with important horticultural histories, set 300 years apart. Shown on the estate map of 1694, Ray Wood was a patch o

Most garden centres stock Choisya ternata, the spring-flowering shrub also known as Mexican orange blossom. It has a certain ubiquity as a result but, if you can overlook that, you’ll see that this is a reliable, manageably sized evergreen with a han