Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2025 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

Design is an aspect of garden making that we are particularly focused on here at Gardens Illustrated. A good garden designer can make the difference between a nice garden and an incredible one, as Nigel Slater can attest (page 33), but what do these creatives do when it comes to their own plots? In this issue, we visit the home gardens of five different designers to find out how they went about making their own private havens, and discover diverse spaces in town and country, big and small. In Devon, Tom Simpson has drawn on both his professional experience and the legacy of his show gardens to create a calm, contemporary space for his parents (page 24). In the Cotswolds, Emily Crowley-Wroe's front garden has become a living sketchbook for…

22 NOVEMBER Coppicing at Elterwater Volunteer and learn an ancient woodland management technique. 9.45am-3pm. Free. The Langdales, Great Langdale, nr Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 9JU. nationaltrust.org.uk 22 NOVEMBER Introduction to Natural Inks Create inks from kitchen waste and garden plants. 12.30-3.30pm. £50. Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Westbourne Road, Birmingham B15 3TR. birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk 29 NOVEMBER Planning and Planting a Small Orchard Learn to design and care for your own orchard in this hands-on session. 9.30am-4pm. From £56. One Garden Brighton, Stanmer Park, Lewes Road, Brighton BN1 9SE. onegardenbrighton.com https://www.gardensillustrated.com/events/gardening-events-and-shows For more events this month and throughout autumn, scan the QR code with your phone camera or visit gardensillustrated.com/events-and-shows…

• Plant sasanqua camellias in a site that is sunny but sheltered from cold winds, with enough time to acclimatise before winter. Soil should be moisture-retentive, with a pH that is slightly acid to neutral. Bear in mind the size of the mature shrub at the outset and allow enough space for it to grow. • Dig a hole around twice the size of the root ball and add some extra organic matter such as leaf mould. Install a stake if required. Remove the young camellia from its container, tease out the roots and plant it so that the top of the compost is level with the surrounding ground. Water well and mulch around the top of the root ball, leaving the woody base of the plant clear. • On…

HIDDEN ASSETS In winter, when the art school here at Benton End closed for the year and the garden fell quiet, Cedric Morris would head to warmer climes to escape the chill of his 16th-century house, but also to paint and undertake plant-hunting excursions. Often he would travel to Spain and Portugal, where he surely picked up the wonderful tiles in this sink that lay hidden in the garden for many years. This vibrant still life perhaps provides a little of the vitamin boost of a winter sojourn in a Mediterranean oasis. How to achieve the look Container and composition It was the Garden Museum's head gardener Matt Collins who uncovered this tiled sink from within the brambles of Benton End's front garden; its glazed tiles still brilliant after years…

GARDENISTA: THE LOW-IMPACT GARDEN by Kendra Wilson Artisan, £35 ISBN 978-1648293610 All you need to know about creating a beautiful outdoor space that's good for the planet. Includes in-depth tours of gardens in a range of climates, and insights on different types of space including courtyard gardens, roof gardens and front gardens, and plenty of practical advice and planting suggestions. A WILDFLOWER YEAR: A GUIDE TO WILDFLOWERS, THEIR HABITATS & HISTORIES by Frances Tophill Octopus Publishing Group, £18.99 ISBN 978-1804192788 BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Frances Tophill documents 60 wildflowers through the year, noting their features, habitat, other species you may find nearby, plus edible or medicinal uses. A useful tool for identifying and growing your own. THE GARDENS OF MIEN RUYS: STRONG DESIGN, LUSH PLANTING, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE…

GARDENS ILLUSTRATED DECEMBER Foraged decorations for a natural Christmas Frosted forms in a grand Victorian garden John Little's wildlife garden in winter A new Piet Oudolf landscape in Berkshire How they create topiary that's fit for The King at Highgrove PLUS Our curated Christmas gift list for gardeners and Dan Pearson's top plants for December…

Jack Wallington Jack visits the garden of designers Ian Kitson and Julie Toll, page 60. “I love how strong the design is alongside the way Julie and Ian have blended everything from meadows, views, wildlife planting – it's impressive.” Julie Skelton Julie photographs the 2025 RHS Young Designer of the Year, Luke Coleman, page 45. “Luke brought a colourful buzz with his garden at the RHS Wentworth Woodhouse show.” Emily Erlam Designer Emily explains how she created her own garden, page 90. “Curating my own garden, filled with bold plants that thrive in shady London, was the beginnings of my career in garden design.” 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 garden was a blank canvas when I first moved in. A single tree. A lawn invaded by alkanet. London clay so hard you couldn't push a spade in. I was more concerned with urgent matters such as the defunct central heating and problematic broadband reception when a friend asked me, “What are you going to do with the garden?” A question that started an unstoppable avalanche of wants. Of course I would like to grow some of my own food. I need fruit trees and nut bushes, bay trees and a herb bed. I couldn't live without a strawberry patch and canes of raspberries. Currants, red, white and black, and pots of blueberries were high on the list too. There must be space for runner beans and rows of…

Earliest gardening memory Helping my ouma and oupa water their garden in South Africa. The fruits of their labours – mangoes, pomegranates, figs – were abundant. First plant love Papaver rhoeas, the common poppy. After the fields beside my childhood home were ploughed, they quickly turned into a sea of bright red. Biggest inspiration My mum. She spends most of her spare time in the garden. I could see the joy it brought her, and her passion was clearly infectious. Horticultural hero Gilles Clément, the French gardener-designer. I admire his principles and his concept of le jardin en mouvement – working with nature's own processes rather than clinging to control. Favourite garden Hermannshof in Weinheim, Germany, when it was managed by Cassian Schmidt – a masterclass in habitat-based planting with stunning…

It's early autumn at the 300-year-old flint barn, overlooking the River Adur in West Sussex. This is HQ of the award-winning mushroom business Caley Brothers - run not by brothers, but by sisters Jodie Bryan and Lorraine Caley. A table is loaded with out-of-this-world gourmet mushrooms – king oyster, yellow oyster, pink oyster, lion's mane – all being cut and prepped for local restaurants’ seasonal menus. One of the king oyster mushrooms weighs in at a whopping 680g. “By growing them at home, you get monumental oysters,” says Lorraine. What the sisters call their ‘mush love’ began in 2018, when they started considering plantorientated diets. Their father was sadly ill with cancer, and with six young children between them, the sisters were trying to move away from meat-based meals. “We're…

Why did you write your new book? I have been a garden designer for more than 40 years and a gardener for even longer, but I've always known that in the making of a garden, it's what the gardener, rather than the designer, does that really counts. Design gets too much coverage, so I wanted to shift the emphasis to the everyday watchfulness that keeps a garden growing. The fact that gardening is a very skilled and creative craft is not recognised enough. What did you learn from writing it? How much there is still to learn. Horticulture is in the melting pot now and young gardeners are pioneering new ways of growing to cope with climate change. I find it hard to give up growing more traditional plants, but…

Are you into ‘rewilding’? Can you define what that is? If you can't, you're not alone. The term has a variety of meanings, not all ecological. When rewilding was originally envisioned by a pioneering group of North American conservationists in 1991, it was defined by three Cs: cores, corridors and carnivores. In most nature-restoration projects, it is far easier to tick the first two boxes than the last, but rewilding should really include apex predators for the trophic cascades that ensue. It is also concerned with huge landscapes. And we're not talking private country estates with a few hundred acres, but thousands of acres. Think Yellowstone National Park in the USA. Soon after wolves were reintroduced there in the 1990s, vast herds of deer and elk stopped overgrazing the land.…

ASTER AGERATOIDES ‘EZO MURASAKI’ One of our later asters here at Hillside, which is useful for maintaining a sense of expectation throughout the latter parts of the growing season. Its handsome, serrated foliage remains healthy and has a low, mounding habit. Although it is not clump-forming and is gently creeping, it is not invasive, and with a Chelsea chop stands well with no need for staking. Tolerant of some shade, it teams well here with the late-season switch grass Panicum virgatum and is happy under the skirts of hip-laden Rosa glauca. Height and spread 60cm x 60cm. Origin Garden (species East Asia). Conditions Retentive, free-draining soil; full sun to light shade. Hardiness RHS H5, USDA 3a-10b†. Season of interest October – November. BOUTELOUA GRACILIS ‘BLONDE AMBITION’ Native to dry US…

Camellia ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ Popular and widespread, it was named the All-America Camellia in 1960. A reliable and tough plant with a slightly pendulous habit, it has a good scent on warmer days. Height and spread: 2.5-4m x 1.5-2.5m. AGM*. RHS H4, USDA 7a-9b†. Camellia sasanqua ‘Plantation Pink’ While not particularly free-flowering when young, this vigorous shrub makes a good wall-trained specimen. Place in a sunny spot near a window from where the perfume can be appreciated. 2-3.5m x 1.5-2.5m. RHS H4, USDA 7a-9b. FACT FILE What Flowering shrubs; a group of extensively hybridised woody plants in the Theaceae family with evergreen leaves and often fragrant flowers. Season Flowers are produced in autumn and winter. Some cultivars produce decorative new foliage in spring. Size Mature plants vary in ultimate size from…

It takes great courage and determination to cast aside a highly paid career in your late forties to take up a new challenge, but these are the qualities that have fuelled Charlotte Rowe's success throughout her professional life. Her risk paid off, and now the former marketing and communications director heads up one of the most revered garden and landscape design practices in the UK. Since establishing her business 21 years ago, Charlotte and her team have designed more than 300 gardens and landscapes, and banked a Gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show along the way for her No Man's Land garden; a commemoration of the First World War, and a tribute to her grandfather who fought in it. We meet in her bright, open-plan studio in west…