Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i The English Garden

Joe Wainwright Joe is an award-winning garden, heritage and tourism photographer. He is based in North East Wales and works across the UK. His photos of Iford Manor in Wiltshire feature on page 34. Benjamin Pope Ben is a head gardener, author, lecturer, and a member of the RHS Herbaceous Plant Expert Group. He works in a private Sussex garden growing fruit, vegetables and cut flowers and visits Iford Manor on p34. Jayne Dowle South Yorkshire-based Jayne writes about gardens for print and digital publications and takes her inspiration from her grandfather, who won many a prize for his veg and roses. She visits a garden in Hathersage on p42.…

Mark Lane The writer, garden designer, TV presenter and disability advocate on the healing powers of horticulture and his vision for the future I owe my love of plants to my grandparents. My grandfather was a passionate gardener who taught me about soil, seed sowing and nurturing the land. My grandmother opened my eyes to colour, scent, form and texture. These early lessons have stuck with me. I left gardening behind when I went to university, but the passion reignited when my husband and I bought our first home over 30 years ago. Each move brought a bigger garden, and each garden brought deeper joy. In 2000 I was in a serious car accident. While I was in hospital, a horticultural therapist re-introduced me to sowing seeds and planting bulbs.…

Beyond Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, other figures are synonymous with Sissinghurst – not least Sibylle Kreutzberger and Pamela Schwerdt, joint head gardeners from 1959 to 1990. They were later joined by Sarah Cook, who stayed at the garden until 2004. Bar a spell at Iford Manor, Troy Scott Smith has been head gardener at Sissinghurst since 2013, and is building on the work of his predecessors. Here he picks ten of his all-time favourite plants from this inimitable garden. Sissinghurst, Biddenden Road, Cranbook, Kent TN17 2AB. Tel: 01580 710700; nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst. Troy’s new online video course, The Art of Gardening At Sissinghurst, launches this month with Create Academy, createacademy.com 1 Malus hupehensis A tree I dream about: for two weeks it’s smothered in wonderful large white flowers, quickly followed by…

The garden at Ballynure House in lush, green County Wicklow was originally begun by Star Mitchell. An avid gardener, she developed herbaceous borders, rock and rose gardens within the old walled garden, but by the time her grandson, David Reid Scott, came to live in the property, it had become more of a ‘secret garden’ for his children to explore. When he and his wife Clare set about restoring the garden in the 1990s, they focused first on the area immediately around the house, which at the time was dominated by brambles and laurels, with little in the way of colour and flowers. To put that right, the couple set about creating plant-packed borders that have developed over the intervening years into colour co-ordinated perfection. While David sadly passed away…

Anew exhibition at the Garden Museum, Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party, will make you smile and you will leave wanting to go a little more over the top. This infectiously enthusiastic celebration of an independent-spirited life has been designed with a sense of sheer pleasure by Luke Edward Hall and is full of surprises and half-remembered connections that will stay with you long after you have left. The first excellent surprise is that Beaton was taught to take photographs by his nanny. He was later to remember the intoxicating scent of the Malmaison carnation his mother often wore tucked into her belt: the sign, clearly, of how to influence your children’s future if you so wish. Beaton went up to St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1922. He failed to get a…

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about fantasy versus reality recently, as I’ve watched my garden slowly desiccating over weeks without rain, becoming so dry and crisp that I haven’t even dared light the barbecue for fear of setting the entire street on fire. It definitely doesn’t look like the vision I had in my head as I planned and planted it, my imagination unrestricted by the reality of such difficult weather. Psychologists warn against excessive immersion in fantasy: apparently, impaired decision-making can be a consequence, which may explain why, as I gaze at the photographs of Dominic Black’s incredible garden on the Cornish coast, I find myself thinking how much I’d like a tibouchina, despite it having no chance of surviving in my neck of the woods. I’ve…

Tucked into a corner of the leafy and fertile North Shropshire countryside, the garden at Goldstone Hall Hotel feels far removed from the tumult of modern life. Wrapped in the rolling landscape, its air of timelessness is made even more profound by the ever-present sound of birdsong and the gentle buzzing of bees busily pollinating an astonishing array of plants. Located between the market towns of Newport and Market Drayton, the hall has been in the care of the same family for nearly 50 years. In that time, through inspiration and hard work, they have created one of the most beautiful and productive hotel gardens in the UK. Covering five acres, it features rose beds and herbaceous borders that provide an exuberant display of summer colour, as well as a…

If ever a group of plants should come with a warning, it’s salvias. Start with just one or two and before you know it you will be scouring nursery lists and leafing greedily through plant catalogues looking for new cultivars to add to your collection. What makes them so addictive? It’s partly that there are just so many to choose from. Salvias are the largest genus in the Lamiaceae, or mint, family, with over 950 species of plants and hundreds of hybrids. Like almost all plants in the mint family, they have square stems and bilaterally symmetrical flowers. Salvias are must-have plants because they are not only beautiful but also incredibly versatile. There are annual, biennial and perennial salvias, ranging from hardy, drought-tolerant small shrubs to exotic-looking tender specimens that…

We’ve all seen beautiful images of perfectly lit gardens: a soft pool of light bringing warmth and cosiness to a seating area, the architectural stems of a statement shrub artfully brought to life at night. But when your garden is already laid out and planted just the way you want it, the thought of the disruption involved in installing lighting could easily put many gardeners off. Adding lighting to an existing, established garden is quite a different matter to incorporating the cables and fittings when you’re starting from scratch. If everything is being redone it’s easy – trenches can be dug to bury electricity cable and lighting layouts can be designed from the off. Many gardeners balk at the idea of digging trenches through existing hard landscaping or planting that’s…

Sometimes August brings with it an air of waiting for something, and when September arrives, I realise that it’s this ‘end of the summer’ feeling that I’ve been waiting for. If August is all about kicking back and basking in the joy of the garden, then September is a month of keeping the show going just a little longer, savouring the late bloomers while welcoming in those subtle first inklings of autumn. This is when the formal hedges and topiary get their last trim of the season, especially the spriggy growers like beech, hornbeam and yew. I quite like a furry yew as in Chris Beardshaw’s Chelsea garden of some years ago – do you remember it? All the topiary was left untrimmed, soft and tactile with lovely bright spring…

Shropshire is not the UK’s driest county, admittedly, but at Wildegoose Nursery in the walled garden at Millichope Park, between Much Wenlock and Ludlow, owners Jack and Laura Willgoss have taken the decision never to water their display garden. The result is a collection of plants uniquely attuned to the needs of the region, withstanding both the heavy rain common in the west as well as prolonged spells of dry weather. “We’ve never watered, not even in the drought of 2022. And, yes, things showed signs of stress, but they soon came back,” Jack explains. “We feel strongly about creating gardens that are stress-tolerant,” he continues. “We’re on limestone, we’re south-facing and we’re surrounded by 12ft-high walls. That pushes plants on their stress levels.” Jack and Laura had all the…

Fatal ATTRACTION Is is possible to have too many dahlias in late summer? There are so many to choose from that it would take decades to grow them all. Start a collection with some of the stalwarts, like the ever-reliable, single-flowered ‘Bishops’, including ‘Bishop of Auckland’ (pictured right). Then move on to more exotic specimens – the pompons and balls, the collarettes and waterlilies, anemones and cactuses. There are colours and shades to suit every taste from playful to restrained, dramatic to understated. DAHLIAS BLACKBERRIES Fail-Safe Blackberry Jelly ● Put 500g blackberries in a large pan with not quite enough water to cover them. Place the pan on a low heat and simmer for 15–20 minutes until the fruit is soft and has lost colour. ● Strain the fruit through…