Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

June is here, and our gardens are filling out with vibrant colour and pleasing abundance. It’s an exciting season of flower shows and garden visits – whatever you do, don’t miss your chance to visit Hillside, the personal garden of renowned designer Dan Pearson in Somerset on our exclusive reader day (page 23). This is a rare opportunity to spend the day with him and learn about how he continues to develop the landscape. In this issue, Dan shares his top ten plants for June (page 16), tried and tested at the garden. This month we also explore beautiful English gardens packed with inspiration and take-home ideas. In Suffolk, designer Colm Joseph has crafted a chic contemporary garden around a new-build house (page 30); and in Essex, John Little’s boundary-pushing…

ALL MONTH Gorgeous Nothings Discover centuries of botanical treasures in this exhibition at Chatsworth. 10.30am-4.30pm. Free with standard ticket (£32). Chatsworth, Bakewell, Derbyshire DE45 1PP. chatsworth.org 7 JUNE Wildflower Identification Day Hone your wildflower knowledge with classroom and outdoor learning. 9.30am-3pm. £15. The Lost Gardens of Heligan, St Austell, Cornwall PL26 6EN. heligan.com 21 JUNE Turning Waste into Gold Learn to make compost and natural fertilisers in this practical workshop. 10am-4pm. From £35. Asthall Manor, Burford, Oxfordshire OX18 4HW. Tel 01993 824319, asthallmanor.com For more events this month and throughout summer, scan the QR code with your phone camera or visit gardensillustrated.com/events-and-shows…

• Salvias need an open sunny site with good airflow and excellent drainage to do their best year on year. Their biggest nemesis is winter wet. The best time to plant is in late spring after the danger of winter frosts has passed, allowing the maximum amount of growing time for plants to establish before winter. • The ideal soil should be free draining so avoid heavy clay soils and those that are regularly nourished with organic ingredients, such as home-made compost or rotted farm manure. Along with increased moisture content, organic rich soils can promote soft, lush growth that can be prone to flopping in the growing season and frost damage in winter. • Many of the herbaceous types can be sheared after their first flush of flowers. Trimming…

*Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. †Hardiness ratings given where available.…

You can tell a lot about a person from their Instagram. That of Sheila Das (before she started her new job at the National Trust where she is “still learning the protocols of taking photos at work”) is full of people – always smiling and often clearly belly laughing. You’ll also find pictures of gifts people have given her – extraordinary cakes complete with mycorrhizal networks permeating the sponge ‘soil’; blankets crocheted with an extensive ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, insects and veg – that must have taken hours to make and are testament to the affection people have for her. It’s entirely mutual. Sheila bubbles over with admiration for those she’s worked with. “I feel so privileged to have met some of the most incredible and inspiring people through horticulture,”…

Towering achievement On completion in 2014, Milan’s Bosco Verticale (or ‘vertical forest’) towers were celebrated for their innovative, biodiverse design, described by Italian architect Stefano Boeri as a “home for trees that also houses humans and birds”. Since then, his design studio Stefano Boeri Architetti has created several urban forest projects, and his latest – Wonderwoods in Utrecht in the Netherlands – is the first ever multi-use vertical forest, open to the public. Not only does it have 200 residential apartments; there are also shops, restaurants and sports areas, as well as office space. Spread across the terraces and balconies are 360 trees and 50,000 plants from 30 native species, providing the same amount of vegetation as two and a half acres of forest. Inside the building, a network of…

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Benjamin Pope Benjamin recommends the best hardy salvias, page 42. “Salvias earn their keep in the garden. Loved by gardeners and bees, they really do deliver all summer long.” Petra Hoyer Millar Petra visits a Cotswold garden, page 66. “An interesting take on a cottage garden with oodles of the charm and generosity of planting normally associated with this much-loved style.” Dianna Jazwinski Dianna photographs sarracenias, page 86. “Walking into the glasshouses, the plants, en-masse, looked outer-worldly. A plant heaven and an absolute joy to photograph.” CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Charlotte Harris Charlotte co-founded the values-driven landscape design practice Harris Bugg Studio with Hugo Bugg in 2017. She has won three Gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, as well as Best Show Garden in 2023. Fergus Garrett Fergus was appointed…

ROSA PIMPINELLIFOLIA 'SINGLE CHERRY' Happy to grow in a range of conditions, and some exposure, this hardy Scotch rose requires little input once established, offering bristly, arching growth with ferny foliage and weighted with flowers. Cerise-pink buds open to single, cherry-red flowers that are 4cm across. It blooms only once, but is heavily perfumed, and a crop of black, spherical fruits follows in late summer. The fruits are not edible. Strong enough to compete in a meadow setting and has a wild feeling, so good for naturalistic plantings. Height and spread 1.2m x 1m. Origin Europe. Conditions Happy on sand or clay; full sun. Hardiness RHS H7, USDA 4a-9b†. Season of interest Flowers May – June; fruits autumn. AKEBIA LONGERACEMOSA This long-racemed akebia is superior to the more familiar and commonly available chocolate vine,…

I have been questioning why I made this garden. What was it that encouraged me turn a perfectly serviceable lawn, a place in which to play and rest, into a home for a stone terrace, topiary domes and climbing roses? Why did I plant an apple tree and a medlar and encourage wild strawberries to run amok in the borders? And what exactly was my thinking behind the inclusion of two sets of yew hedges and a table of potted herbs? Details that inevitably involve more work than play. I am asking this because of the hours (and hours) I spend working in this garden, sweeping paths and deadheading roses, sowing nasturtiums and potting up pelargoniums, not to mention the time taken up by watering pots and fighting back skeins…

First plant love Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’, also known as the wedding cake tree. The Greenmount campus of the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), near Belfast, where I studied has a beautifully tiered tree on its campus, and this is where I first discovered it. Who has inspired your career the most? Mark Gregory of Landform. I met him at a talk in Dublin, and instantly knew I wanted to work for him. His enthusiasm and passion for the industry really drew me in and hearing about his career, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Favourite garden The walled garden at Glenarm Castle, in Country Antrim, where I grew up, will always be special to me. I did work experience there and fell in love with the gardens.…

Today’s gardeners can take digital photographs of plants in the blink of an eye. But horticulturally trained cyanotype artist Sophie Cook has returned to photography’s analogue beginnings, working with natural cycles to capture botanical forms in a slower, more considered manner, to create pieces in Prussian blue, white and gold. Cyanotype is one of the oldest forms of photography, invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842. Sophie first discovered the technique 20 years ago during her art foundation course in Nottingham. “I was really interested in analogue, low-tech, hands-on photography,” she says. “I was introduced to cyanotypes during that year. Something about the blue really stuck with me and I’ve been doing it ever since.” Sophie went on to study environmental science and horticulture, ending up as assistant nursery manager…

Are you hankering after a beautiful garden that is full of diversity but also one that isn’t a burden? If so, bombproof plants are the answer. These hard-working and reliable specimens will create a good-looking space and are endlessly reliable, long lived and resilient to pests. “Bombproof plants are amiable, polite, work hard and aren’t primadonna-ish. They’re doers,” says plantsman and designer Chris Beardshaw, who also likes to use the phrase ‘cockroach’ plants. “They’re the plants that when we are doing a planting plan, we can absolutely rely on.” Of course, you have to be in tune with your local conditions and climate, but, as Chris says, they’re the ones that “get out of bed in the morning and say let’s get on with it”. These no-nonsense – some might…

COLOUR IN THE GARDEN by Lucy Bellamy Mitchell Beazley, £25 ISBN 978-1784729349 A modern approach to colour in the garden, which eschews blowsy, intensively bred and brightly coloured blooms in favour of a more subtle approach, using texture, washes and pops of colour. Includes beautiful contemporary planting palettes and advice on colour in containers and smaller spaces. FEIJOA by Kate Evans Hachette, £22 ISBN 978-1869718015 This South American fruiting and ornamental plant is a national obsession in New Zealand. The author traces its journey there from the forests of Uruguay and southern Brazil via BIODYNAMIC GARDENING DK, £ 22 ISBN 978-0241732045 Explains how to reap the benefits of a biodynamic, organic approach to gardening and grow abundant crops in tune with lunar cycles. Includes a biodynamic calendar to help you…

We sometimes describe our gardens as ‘outside rooms’ – but a garden is so much more. The main difference between interiors and exteriors is living material. It is our proximity to plants that has the biggest impact on our mental wellbeing, but for that to be possible, plants need soil. Soil, therefore, is what makes a garden. Soil is something we all have experience of. It’s beneath our feet; we see it everywhere. But when we’re making changes to our gardens, it’s easy to take soil for granted. After all, soil will always be there, right? All gardens have ‘soil’ and where they don’t, we can simply add new ‘soil’. If you’re gardening on a new build, you may be wondering why you’re struggling to establish new plants, and where…

OUT & ABOUT Flower power Along with sightings of the first swift, British Flowers Week (16-22 June) has become a welcome reminder that summer has finally arrived. In the run-up to this celebration of the florists and wholesalers who produce and use British-grown flowers, the Garden Museum in London has invited some of UK’s best floral designers to transform its 14th-century, Grade II*-listed building with immersive floral installations – all using Britishgrown blooms and sustainable materials. This year the exhibition includes floral artistry from gardener and writer Arthur Parkinson; flower designer Leigh Chappell (whose work is shown); botanical set designer Rollo Skinner; florist Yeon Hee Lee; creative studio Palais London; and luxury florist Wild at Heart. There will also be an evening panel discussion with the florists on 5 June.…

IN BRIEF What Modern cottage garden. Where Oxfordshire. Size One acre. Soil Varied clay loam. Climate Temperate, usually drier than the rest of the UK (average minimum temperatures of -6°C to -4°C). Hardiness zone USDA 9a. When your home has the kind of timeless country charm that comes complete with a honey-coloured stone façade, the temptation might be to pair it with a quintessentially English cottage garden. But the owners of this cottage in south Oxfordshire had something more modern in mind. As part of a renovation, they had added a new glass and metal extension to the house and wanted a garden that would not only complement the historical architecture, but also embrace its contemporary additions. They turned to designer Emily Crowley-Wroe for help. Other than asking for a…

There are many compelling examples of how water can hold a bold yet not loud presence in a garden, and none more so than at the iconic Jardin Plume (left) in northern France. Here the water sits at the heart of the orchard garden. It is a clean edged, purposeful, geometric gesture that cuts through the looser, natural textures, creating a deliberate tension; a strong, still architectural presence that acts as a canvas also for the sky. Another similarly simple and striking use of water appears at Lur Garden (above) in northern Spain, the experimental and expressive testbed of Lur Paisajistak, the landscape architecture studio led by Iñigo Segurola and Juan Iriarte. Among a sequence of bold, contrasting spaces, a large oval pool sits low in the landscape. Like at…

What prompted you to write this book? I’m a great sci-fi fan and interested in how we will grow food in space. Researching the book made me realise the future is already here, to some extent, especially when we look at how we disseminate information, and the use of AI to assist with gardening, watering, feeding, care and maintenance. It then raised the question of whether we will be replaced when it comes to the future of gardens and gardening. I hope the book reveals that it is not all doom and gloom for the human race and we really do need to focus on being resilient gardeners who question and adapt at every stage. What did you learn from writing this book? So many things. When I looked at…