Country Gardens and gardening tips
The reimagined gardens at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, have stepped into the limelight to offer a powerful overture to the summer opera festival, explains Kendra Wilson. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
Some gardens are even better in winter. Read our list of the best gardens to visit all year round.
The historic Dower House Garden at Morville, Shropshire, has been sensitively re-created by its owner, finds Non Morris. Photographs by Val Corbett for Country Life.
A beautiful country house is as much about its surroundings as its bricks and mortar, something that the best garden designers in Britain all understand. We've completely revised and updated our list of the finest of them all.
Surrealism, philosophy, nature and gardening come together at the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, as Annunciata Elwes explains.
Thanks to the determination of the resident community of Benedictine nuns, the eight-acre garden at Kylemore Abbey Gardens in Connemara, Ireland, has been restored. Once lockdown lifts, visitors can once again enjoy a Victorian survival in an extraordinary setting. Mary Hackett paid a visit; photographs by Zara Napier.
In the depths of winter at Drummond Castle, near Crieff, Perthshire, the crisp outlines of the 11 miles of box hedging and the perfect trim on the countless topiaried yews still take the breath away in a garden made famous by the Outlander TV series. Caroline Donald tells its story, with photographs by Clive Nichols.
Every week, Country Life looks at the country's most beautiful gardens and asks questions about why we dedicate so much time to the pursuit of this natural beauty. These are the most viewed of those articles from 2020.
When Dr Wilfrid Fox began his arboretum in 1938, he envisaged not simply a collection of tree species, but planting on such a scale as to create its own landscape. Under its new manager, this extraordinary place is, at last, being given the attention it deserves, reveals Charles Quest-Ritson.
The lure of a secret garden is as strong now as it was when Frances Hodgson Burnett first published The Secret Garden over a century ago. With a recent film adaptation — the fifth — having hit screens, Juliet Roberts selects a few of her favourite secret gardens.
Troy Scott-Smith, head gardener at Iford Manor, tells the tale of how the great Harold Peto found Iford and used it to his gardening and architectural dreams come to life.
Tiffany Daneff visits Painswick Rococo Garden, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, one of the best examples of a Rococo garden in this country — a place of hidden pavilions and romantic copses watched over by the god of woodland revels. Photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer.
Informed by the Japanese ‘landscape in the garden’ tradition, the naturalistic riverside gardens of Bere Mill, Hampshire, flow with ease into their languid surroundings says Tiffany Daneff. Pictures by Andrea Jones.
James Truscott is entranced by a series of new gardens at Monteviot, near Jedburgh. that that successfully captures the magic of growing up in a place rich in history and legend. Photographs by Andrea Jones.
Among the many beautiful features in Country Life's 29 July 2020 issue — guest edited by The Princess Royal — is the article about the garden at the astonishing Ruvaal lighthouse. Getting the pictures to illustrate it proved to be something of an epic for photographer Andrea Jones.
Steven Desmond visits the early-20th-century garden created at Parcevall Hall in Skyreholme, North Yorkshire, by Sir William Milner and now triumphantly restored. Photographs by Richard Bloom.
Charles Quest-Ritson visits the National Collection of rambling roses, which shows these most romantic of plants at their very finest. Photographs by Britt Willoughby-Dyer for the Country Life Picture Library.
Kathryn Bradley-Hole looks at how the owners of Benington Lordship, near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, have taken on a renowned garden and made it work for a new generation without straining budgets or needing endless time.
Non Morris tours the Private Gardens at Petworth House, West Sussex , the home of Lord and Lady Egremont, and finds a secluded garden within the landscaped acres that’s been managed with great charm and panache. Photographs by Val Corbett.
The Old Rectory in Litton Cheney, Dorset has four acres of gardens with many and varying elements, all drawn beautifully together with the help of Arne Maynard. Christopher Stocks paid a visit; photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer for Country Life.
