Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

As summer unfolds, our gardens hit their peak, and this issue we are celebrating amazing spaces up and down the country, from windswept seaside plots to water-wise plantings and wildlife-rich pools. In Oxfordshire, you can dine out in style in Tabitha Rigden's reimagining of a classic country pub garden (page 68); and at Ellicar Gardens in South Yorkshire you can dive into an extraordinary swimming pond garden that's a boon for biodiversity (page 86). In Dorset, designer Helen Elks-Smith has harnessed the dramatic views of Poole Harbour for a contemporary take on a coastal garden (page 54); while on a sun-baked hilltop in Surrey, designer Matthew Wilson has made a new dry garden that demonstrates how beautiful drought-resilient planting can be (page 30). This sort of zero-irrigation project is likely…

3 JULY Pressed Flower Art Learn about the history of flower pressing and create your own frame. 10.30am-12.30pm. £90. Petersham Nurseries, Church Lane, Off Petersham Road, Richmond TW10 7AB. petershamnurseries.com 16-20 JULY RHS Flower Show Wentworth Woodhouse This one-off RHS show replaces Tatton for 2025. 10am-5pm. From £10.85. Wentworth, Rotherham, South Yorkshire S62 7TQ. rhs.org.uk 27 JULY Serge Hill Plant Fair Explore the gardens and buy plants from specialist nurseries. Booking essential. 11am-4pm. £10. Serge Hill Gardens, Serge Hill Lane, Bedmond, Hertfordshire WD5 0RT. sergehillproject.co.uk For more events this month and throughout summer, scan the QR code with your phone camera or visit gardensillustrated.com/events-and-shows…

Eating in the garden started early this year, with the finest spring weather I can remember. The smell of neighbours' delicious marinades, of thyme, garlic and rosemary, wafted over the gardens even while the tulips were still in flower. They usually wait at least until the wisteria is over. I tend to cook outside less often than I eat there, relishing the seasoning effect of a summer breeze on my salads, or that of the sunshine on a basil-scented tomato. The warmth intensifies the flavours almost as much as salt and pepper. Anyone who has ever eaten a slice of watermelon on the beach will know the effect the warm, salt air has the sweetness of the cool, scarlet-fleshed fruit. I can blow hot and cold about outdoor cooking. While…

EXOTIC MEADOW This airy, bright combination evokes the walled garden at Benton End, which in the decades since Cedric Morris's death in 1982 has become what the writer Ronald Blythe once described as ‘a hay-meadow of exotics’. As part of our renewal of the garden, we're now peeling the meadow back and re-establishing borders, so that the flowers Cedric grew and painted, such as these tiger lilies with their kicked-back, orange-spotted petals and protruding filaments, can be freely cultivated. How to achieve the look Container and composition I used this old galvanised drinking trough as a water butt before starting to plant it up. I can't bring myself to change its purpose by drilling holes in its base, but short-term plantings work fine as long as watering is carefully monitored,…

It is a long way from the bright lights of the West End to the green fields of the West Country, but Sarah Mead is the sort of person who takes such things in her stride. “I got here through love,” says the co-owner of Yeo Valley Organic Garden (and its adjacent dairy empire). “It wasn't the plan. I wanted to be Liza Minelli and had an unlikely obsession with the musical Cabaret, but then I married a farmer and moved to Somerset.” Initially, the young couple divided their time between Somerset and London, with Sarah supplementing her meagre income as a dancer by showing flats for a developer. But when her husband Tim's father died, they returned to support his mother, moving into the farmhouse and inheriting the garden…

Rachel Warne Rachel photographs our gardening talent, page 53. “Meeting someone who cares so deeply about horticulture was refreshing. An inspiring conversation in the green space beneath a motorway.” Greg Loades Greg visits a Yorkshire garden with a natural swimming pond, page 86. “Ellicar is a garden with an intoxicating can-do spirit that effortlessly works with nature.” Cleve West Cleve argues we need to change how we talk about nature, page 122. “Many gardeners are now working with nature, as opposed to against her, but we need to educate the wider public.” 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…

ALLIUM CARINATUM SUBSP. PULCHELLUM A late-flowering allium, as good in expectant bud as it is in bloom. Long scapes, stained purple, twist and turn as they ascend to flower. Mauve-purple droplets hover at about 30cm, making a fine complement to fine, low-growing grasses and sages. It seeds prolifically in open conditions, but is not problematic in the right company and where you can afford to allow it to naturalise. Clump forming with winter green, grassy foliage that withers away as it comes to flower, it is drought tolerant and tolerant of winter wet in free-draining conditions. AGM*. Height and spread 60cm x 20cm. Origin Central and southern Europe. Conditions Free-draining soil; full sun.  Hardiness RHS H5, USDA 4a-9b†. Season of interest June – September. SANTOLINA ROSMARINIFOLIA ‘CAERULEA’ One of my favourite santolinas. It…

1. Poa labillardierei This tough Australasian tussock grass is Helen's first choice for coastal gardens, forming resilient semi-evergreen mounds of narrow blue-green leaves. Delicate silver-blue flowerheads appear in summer. Requires a sunny, open spot. Height and spread: 1.2m x 1m. RHS H4, USDA 8a-11†. 2. Sesleria ‘Summer Skies’ A recent introduction (2022) from nearby grass specialist Knoll Gardens, this evergreen grass is recommended for drifts or matrix planting. Creamy-white summer flowers are held above firm, upright mounds of blue-grey foliage. 50cm x 50cm. 3. Echium pininana There is a touch of the prehistoric about these mighty blue or white spires. Best known to British gardeners from the island of Tresco, the plant is native to the Canary Islands, and will flower in only the mildest coastal gardens. Here it has…

WILD HARMONY: URBAN GARDENS by Bart Haverkamp and Pieter Croes Luster, £32 ISBN 978-9460583810 Belgian garden architects Bart & Pieter have been working together for more than 30 years and have developed a signature style that lets nature take control. Wild Harmony features over 20 recently completed projects, focusing mostly on urban gardens, rooftop spaces, terraces and small plots, highlighting what can be done with limited space and budget. I, BUXUS: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE TREE OF AFTERLIFE by Tomasz Anisko Landszaft, US$81.75 (plus p&p) ISBN 978-8397020610 A fascinating portrait of Buxus sempervirens, or common box, narrated from the perspective of the tree itself. The meticulously researched text spans centuries and countries and the photographs, taken by the author, show the diverse contexts in which boxwood can be found…

THE FLOWER ISSUE A special Summer edition all about beautiful blooms • How the garden at Charleston is evolving • Nigel Dunnett on combining flower shapes in the garden • A Cornish flower farm with a difference • Finding the right vessel for your cut-flower arrangements • Brilliant summer gardens packed with colour PLUS Top heleniums and the best flower-growing kit…

First plant love Nesocodon mauritianus, the endangered Mauritian bellflower. Its blood-red nectar evolved to attract day geckos, which see red vividly. That discovery opened my eyes to the intentionality of plants and how fragile their survival is in the face of biodiversity loss and climate change. Who has inspired your career the most? My friend Eileen Gahan, who like me also moved to the UK from Ireland to garden. We studied together at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland. Her passion and support have been a huge part of my journey in horticulture. Horticultural heroes Jimi Blake's adventurous planting style and eye for new plants is incredible. He grows some of the coolest plants in Ireland. Also, John Little and his radical and experimental approach to ecological gardening is thrilling. Both…

1. Helen found this piece of Purbeck stone in a local quarry. Its interesting form is a result of water moving across and through the ground forming the lovely horizontals. Nature had done the heavy lifting; all Helen had to do was to was drill a hole through the middle so the rainchain can direct water to a soakaway. Surrounding it a star burst of thin stones spreads out like a splash of water. 2. These thin slices of walling stone (known locally as ‘Purbeck pitchers’) are used in the garden for both vertical and horizontal surfaces. Near the house they are laid out Lutyens style to create areas of paving, augmented by limestone gravel and self-seeding plants such as Erigeron karvinskianus. 3. For the dining terrace, Helen has used…

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What is your new book about? It's about bogs. Having been in the horticultural industry for a very long time, I was, and still am, a little frustrated by the fact that we are still being slow to adopt peat-free gardening. I felt like I'd said this in many different ways, in many different places. But I'd never really stopped to look at what a bog is, so I went on a journey to find out. Bogs have a greater role beyond being dug up – in our climate, our history and who we are as a people. So the book is my love letter to bogs, but also a plea to my industry to say please, really care about these places. The book is not about how you garden…

Back in the 1990s, when organic gardening was still considered the preserve of eco-eccentrics, I often found myself cursing garden-media pundits recommending an arsenal of chemical deterrents to rid their gardens of uninvited guests. Today, hearing garden experts celebrating garden gatecrashers suggests that the notion that we are part of nature, not detached from it, is at last gaining traction. So why are there still aisles at garden centres and DIY stores stacked high with pesticides and herbicides? Perhaps, if we really want to champion a mindset rooted in understanding, co-existence and respect, it's time to stop using the word ‘pest’? Having gardened without the use of chemicals for more than 30 years, it's frustrating to see this word used so frequently in the garden media, as it oversimplifies nature's…