Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

Autumn is the season of colourful foliage and jewel-bright flowers and berries. Whether you are tidying up your garden now, are busy planting at the best time for it, or simply sitting back and enjoying the seasonal performance, we've got plenty of inspiration in this issue to make sure you make the most of the shorter days. For this October issue, we are featuring five fabulous places packed with colourful leaves and late blooms. There's an incredible new lakeside landscape in the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park in the Scottish Highlands, created by designer Tracy McQue (page 26), perfectly at one with its surroundings; and an amazing courtyard on the island of Nantucket in America designed by Piet Oudolf with his signature perennials, but built to survive the…

Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library is preserving five heirloom vegetable seeds in The King's Foundation's 35th-anniversary time capsule. The oak box will be buried for 100 years at the foundation's headquarters at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, to be reopened in 2125. All five varieties of seed – beetroot ‘Dobbies Purple’, tomato ‘Market King’, runner bean ‘Gramp Nicholls’ and French bean ‘Veitchs Climbing’ – have previously been grown at Dumfries House and will sit alongside HM The King's own secateurs and a personal letter. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Heritage Seed Library. kings-foundation.org…

A new tableware collection from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, provides the chance to own a piece of botanical history. Kew has collaborated with traditional woodworkers Selwyn House to create a range of butter and cake knives, bowls, chopping boards and candlesticks, handcrafted using waste timber from trees in Kew's arboretum, felled due to storm damage, disease or sustainable management. Each piece comes with a unique mark, allowing customers to trace it back to the original tree and find out where it grew and why it was felled. The collection will drop over the coming weeks at the garden's shop and online. shop.kew.org…

When I began my career, there was a gap for naturalistic, wild gardening in public and domestic gardens. It's mainstream now Earliest garden memory Looking at insects quite closely and picking blackberries, peaches and strawberries. Shelling peas with my mum is a memory I'm very fond of. First plant love Tulips for their simplicity, shapes and colours. What did you do before you became a gardener? I was planning to become a make-up artist. I fell into cinema management and darted from admin role to admin role. Then, while volunteering at a community garden, a switch came on and I realised I had to be a gardener. Who are your horticultural heroes? My late mother taught me gardening from a young age, and without her encouragement and exposure to the…

BINNY NURSERY Peony planting time is coming soon. Fifty years on and we remain besotted by tree, intersectional and herbaceous peonies. This season's bare-root offering is now online with new varieties and re-introduced favourites and a good range of extra large roots. Email for a copy of the list. We also offer a large range of other herbaceous plants, ferns, grasses and shrubs. binnynursery binnynurseries.com | contact@binnynursery.com | 07753 626117 BETTER PLANTING Wide range of mainly herbaceous perennials grown chemical free, with emphasis on easy care flower species, including foliage plants, ferns and grasses. Cost saving genera collections of selected best varieties. Designed planting plans with plants for several situations, themes and colour schemes. Mail order only. Free plant with orders over x5 plants. betterplanting.co.uk TALKING GARDENS Heard the latest from Gardens…

Richard Bloom Photographer Richard captures a Scottish garden (page 26). “This incredible garden has been crafted with immense sensitivity to the magnificent surrounding landscape. One to watch evolve.” Polly Nicholson Author of The Tulip Garden, Polly grows her bulbs sustainably (page 56). “The rhythms of my life are dictated by my tulips, working with nature to keep rare, historic cultivars alive.” Tony Spencer Canada-based Tony visits a new Piet Oudolf garden (page 62). “On a recent trip to speak in Nantucket, I got a last-minute invite to visit the one garden I most wanted to see on the island.” 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,…

It is time to plan spring displays and Sarah Raven's Collective provides plenty of inspiration in the form of five tulip collections from horticulture's ‘tastemakers’, including Anna Potter (pictured), founder of Sheffield florist Swallows and Damsons, with her Dutch masters’ palette, and royal florist Shane Connolly, who has paired fluffball Tulipa ‘Verona Sunrise’ with striking, pink T. ‘Doll's Minuet’. View the whole collection and purchase at sarahraven.com…

25 OCTOBER Growing fruit in small spaces Learn how to train and prune fruit trees and soft fruit to keep them small. 9.30am-4pm. Home Farm Orchard, Stanmer Park, Brighton BN1 9QA. brightonpermacultureorg.uk UNTIL 2 NOVEMBER Nerine Exhibition Admire more than 900 varieties of fiery-toned, autumn-flowering jewel lilies, and buy your own. 10am-5pm. Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway, Southampton SO45 1AZ. exbury.co.uk UNTIL 25 JANUARY 2026 Rory McEwen: Nature's Song Discover the botanical works of the Scottish artist and musician. 10am-5pm. Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB. gardenmuseum.org.uk For more events this month and throughout autumn, scan the QR code with your phone camera or visit gardensillustrated.com/events-and-shows…

Imperial College London has transformed its Beit Quad courtyard as part of an urban greening initiative to champion climate change adaptation, sustainable resource management and biodiversity. The quadrangle now features 44 types of hardy perennial and six tree species alongside shrubs and bulbs. The palette includes plants that flower and fruit throughout the year to provide food for bees, while interconnecting strips of grass and paving have replaced expanses of hardscaping to better cope with heavy rainfall. A curved wooden bench provides space for students to relax. The design comes from landscape architecture studio J&L Gibbons. jlg-london.com…

Few moments are quite as exciting to this gardener as when the first of the spring bulbs poke their green beaks through the garden soil. “They're up!” I cry, grateful and slightly amazed. I first planted bulbs aged about seven: a row of pink and white hyacinths in tall glass vases the colour of boiled sweets. The roots would curl around like spaghetti, clearly visible through the emerald, ruby and yellow glass, a magical sight to a wide-eyed boy gardener. Weeks later, once their flowers had browned and their perfume vanished, I would lose interest until they eventually toppled over. My tulip order was sent the moment this year's lists appeared online. But narcissi, crocus and camassia were left so late that I may have missed out a few beauties.…

Ask Uli Lorimer to describe himself and he'll tell you he's a “through and through plant nerd”. The director of horticulture at the US-based Native Plant Trust is a tireless advocate of New England plants in public gardens, the designed landscape and those found in the wild. “While my work is focused on New England plants, I am a lover of plants anywhere,” he says. It's the start of a new day when I dial in to speak with him Stateside and he is busy overseeing operations at the internationally recognised botanic garden, Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, Massachusetts. His remit also includes Nasami Farm, a nursery focused on propagation of, and research about, New England native plants, as well as wider initiatives. OUR MESSAGE IS THAT NATIVE PLANTS…

IN BRIEF What Mature woodland garden with several plant collections and more than 3,000 plant species. Where Northamptonshire. Size 60 acres. Soil 40 acres of Cotswold brash atop heavy clay and 20 acres of acidic greensand. Climate Temperate. Hardiness zone USDA 4-5. They say that ignorance is bliss,” says Nicola Taylor, the owner of Evenley Wood Garden. “I had literally no idea what I was doing at first.” Inherited from her late father, renowned plantsman Timothey (Timmy) Whiteley MBE, the garden shows no sign of this modestly professed ignorance. The 60-acre woodland garden is packed with some 3,000 species of beautifully curated, unusual bulbs and plants. Hundreds of mature trees, awash with autumn colour, provide a magnificent canopy to the shrubs beneath; collections of Euonymus (perhaps the largest in Europe), Crataegus and Rosa are dripping…

One of the great joys of plants is their optimism: elbowing their way into inhospitable places and swaggering into spots where there seems no chance of life; when the ground is hostile or paved over, when there is no soil at all. But how do we design green spaces where there isn't a garden, in the traditional sense? Let's call this ‘above-ground gardening’ to cover a range of different experiences. This is not second-best gardening. It is revolutionary, bringing planting into courtyards, front gardens, balconies, pavements and rooftops; squeezing green into the smallest gaps; conjuring soils and conditions, experimenting with scale and combinations that otherwise might be impossible. Far from limiting, it is liberating, and provides flexibility; planters can be relocated, replaced or re-shaped as life changes. Experimentalists rejoice: you…

What's your new book about? It is about creating beautiful, resilient gardens that use water more thoughtfully. It draws on more than a decade of design work and research, written in collaboration with the brilliant RHS science team, and offers practical advice, planting palettes and case studies. At its heart, it's about rethinking how we value, protect and preserve water in our gardens and beyond. What did you learn from writing it? That waterwise gardening isn't about restriction or compromise – it's about creativity. It's about reading your site, understanding the flow of water and recognising opportunities for storage, whether in tanks, butts or passive gravity-fed systems like rain gardens, swales or ephemeral ponds. Working with the RHS science team gave me a deeper appreciation of how much can be…

Last spring, I held a funeral for a hedge. It was a cobbled-together ceremony for us to share our grief for the ‘singing hedge’ that had been cared for by our late neighbour for decades. The previous April, having failed to save the hedge, we watched as the digger wrenched it out and destroyed the complex assembly of organisms that separated our front garden from next door. We watched sparrows do U-turns in mid-air. We asked to adopt the remains. Once the landscapers had dumped the severed limbs on our drive, my partner carried the pile to the back garden, saving pieces that still bore roots. In the days that followed, I moved between this solemn stack of matter in the back garden and the silence in the front garden.…

COLOUR EXPLOSION Anyone in search of autumn colour this October might consider a trip to Hever Castle & Gardens in Kent, once the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. The 14th-century, double-moated castle, set within 125 acres of beautiful grounds, is cloaked in distinctive Boston ivy, which turns striking crimson in autumn. This month, take a self-guided autumn trail though the gardens to see the unique and unusual trees along Lake Walk as they turn gold, orange and red, and the estate's 5,000 rose bushes bristling with scarlet rosehips. As part of Hever's Autumn Colour celebration, there's also a chance to take part in a series of workshops throughout the month. Join fashion-designer-turned-gardener Felix Green to learn how to dye fabrics using common plants grown in the gardens, and discover the…

ANEMONE HUPEHENSIS ‘SPLENDENS’ This is my favourite Japanese anemone. Relatively short in stature and gently creeping, with an indefinite spread, but not dominant in the company of suitably matched perennials such as persicarias or astrantias. This long-lived perennial is a mainstay of the autumn garden. An asymmetric flower of five petals, two often larger, gives the simple flowers an honest charm. The rich, rose-pink blooms have darker flushes on the outer surfaces. Flowers over a long season. Height and spread 60cm x 60cm. Origin China. Conditions Sun to semi-shade; retentive but well-drained soils. Hardiness RHS H7, USDA 6a. Season of interest September/October†. NERINE BOWDENII Long-lived bulbous perennial that prefers to be found a permanent position and then not disturbed – somewhere hot and dry with summer baking to ripen the summer-dormant bulbs. Erect leafless…

FACT FILE What A range of bulbous plants from several plant families that typically bloom in autumn and early winter. Season From mid-August through to late October or early November. Leaves often develop after the flowers. Size From petite to robust, with clumps generally increasing over time. Dimensions given are for height only – how quickly they spread very much depends on their cultivation. Conditions Usually best in full sun with good drainage. Origins Europe (especially the Mediterranean basin), the Middle East and South Africa. Hardiness Varies across the range – each species will have different tolerances. *Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. †Hardiness ratings given where available. Too many years ago, I spent a very happy few days with friends in the Peloponnese. It was early November; rain had…

Blaze of glory A large terracotta pot stands sentinel at the entrance to the greenhouse in my Arne Maynard-designed walled garden at Blacklands. As a nod to the ‘broken’ (flamed and feathered) tulips in my National Collection, I selected Tulipa ‘Rems Favourite’, a Triumph tulip often sold incorrectly as a Rembrandt tulip. I then chose a range of pink, orange and black cultivars for their contrasting forms and ability to survive in the wild after their initial year in captivity. PLANTS T. ‘Rems Favourite’ A Triumph tulip that is ivory white, feathered with brushstrokes of beetroot. 50cm. T. ‘Continental’ A recent introduction, this Triumph tulip has dark-maroon, cup-shaped flowers and a dark stem. 40cm. T. ‘Cairo’ A compact Triumph tulip that has glowing orange, cup-shaped blooms. 40-45cm. T. ‘Gabriella’ A Triumph tulip with…

Once a favourite of Henry VIII and served at the table of Queen Victoria, medlars have become Britain's most unloved tree fruit. It is a status that Jane Steward is determined to change, describing herself as on a one-woman mission to revive this easy-to-grow tree. Jane's love of medlars came about by accident. Having spent much of her working life in the City of London, Jane moved to Norfolk when she married her husband, David. One of their wedding presents was a medlar tree, which they planted in the grounds of their north Norfolk home. Illness led Jane to seek a less pressurised lifestyle, focusing on the garden. Fascinated by medlars, she planted an orchard of more than 115 cultivars, and set up a business making chutney and jelly. In…

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HEN PARTY: A CELEBRATION by Arthur Parkinson Particular Books, £16.99 ISBN 978-0241674703 A guide to keeping beautiful chicken breeds, both common and rare. Spotlighting more than 50 breeds, from the classy Ancona to the lavishly laced Wyandotte, Parkinson shares everything you need to know about each breed's attributes, behaviour and quirks, alongside his own illustrations. THE CONTEMPORARY GARDEN Introduction by Annie Guilfoyle Phaidon, £44.95 ISBN 978-1838668235 Curated by an international team of horticultural experts, this lavish book features 300 of the greatest contemporary gardens across the globe from renowned gardeners, rising stars and owner-makers. BIRD HAVEN FARM: THE STORY OF AN ORIGINAL AMERICAN GARDEN by Janet Mavec Rizzoli, £45 ISBN 978-0847874279 A four-season exploration of one of America's great contemporary private gardens, written by its owner, Janet Mavec, and photographed…