Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i The English Garden

Annaïck Guitteny Originally from France, Annaïck photographs beautiful gardens across Europe and the UK. Recently awarded Photographer of the Year by the Garden Media Guild, her photos of West Dean are on page 54. Ian Tocher Ian is a garden writer and horticulturist who has worked at top UK heritage gardens including RHS Wisley, Hampton Court Palace and the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens. He visits Goodnestone Park on page 40. Clive Nichols Clive is one of the UK’s foremost garden photographers and his book, Brilliant English Gardens, features 27 superb gardens shot by him. His photos of the garden at Kent’s Goodnestone Park appear on page 40.…

Maurice Foster The founder of White House Farm Garden and Arboretum in Kent on his enduring love of woody plants and hopes for the future I grew up amid rolling farmland, surrounded by birds, flowers and trees, and was largely brought up by my grandmother. She entrusted me with a patch of garden where I grew three currant bushes – red, white and black. They were my pride and joy. When my wife and I moved to White House Farm in Kent, it was so our four children could have space to be free. I spent my weekends with an axe, clearing the five acres of wilderness. It was my escape from a busy week as a publishing director. I didn’t at that point have the time to consider a…

Although the gardens at Crook Hall in the city of Durham date back to the 13th century, under the care of Ann Tulloch they are constantly evolving. Now consisting of a series of fascinating rooms, they have something to offer anyone who passes through them at any time of year. Set within striking distance of Durham Cathedral, Grade I listed Crook Hall began its storied life in the Middle Ages, when it was a family home belonging to the son of the Archdeacon of Durham. It then came into the hands of Peter del Croke, for whom it was named. Various families owned it over the ensuing 600 years, and each left their mark: a Jacobean manor was added in the 17th century; a Georgian house went up in the…

At a time when much of the garden sleeps, winter flowers are all the more precious for their scarcity; an irrepressible bunch, undaunted by wind, frost or even a blanket of snow. Many are small, yet they inject colour and interest into a grey wintry landscape. And the simplest sights – the first snowdrops emerging among crisp leaves, an iris nestling in tangled foliage, or a fiery witch hazel illuminated by a low sun – take on greater significance in this period of heightened appreciation when less means more. Among these doughty plants, many bear flowers that are both beautiful and fragrant. Fragrance is a lovely bonus: nature’s way of attracting any pollinating insects that are abroad, and on even the coldest day bumble bees can be seen collecting pollen…

A dream home is the result of thoughtful design choices, meaningful details, and a garden that can be enjoyed throughout the year. With this in mind, we at The English Home have collaborated with our sister publication The English Garden to create a special joint supplement that explores these themes, offering expert advice on shaping your ideal home and garden. In my own home, I’ve learnt that design decisions should begin with how you want a room or outdoor space to make you feel, balanced with an eye for practicality and materials that will stand the test of time. Within this supplement, our “perfect room” guides share inspiring atmospheres and smart, functional features for key spaces. Outdoors, our specialist tips cover everything from greenhouses to garden sculpture. When planning new…

‘A bathroom should feel like a sanctuary, so begin by understanding its purpose: is it a private retreat, a family hub or a welcoming guest space?’ advises Lizzi Catchpole, head of design at Catchpole & Rye. ‘Once function is clear, let beauty take the lead – choose materials that age gracefully, finishes that delight the senses, and details that elevate the everyday.’ To achieve this, she suggests the following: ‘Heated towel rails, elegant fittings and thoughtful storage transform routine into ritual. Above all, create with longevity in mind, so the space feels timeless and deeply personal for years to come.’…

Not just practical necessities, windows, doors, stairs and hardware fixtures can make all the difference to a home’s style, character and comfort. They can be used to create a coherent look to a property, enhancing the beauty of its architecture, whether it is a period townhouse or a country cottage.…

On the list of requisites for a garden, sculpture is often fairly far down the page. Plants, hard landscaping, lighting and furniture are all likely to take precedence over a piece of garden art, but sculpture can complete a space. Garden designers will sometimes suggest that the starting point for a garden is how one would like to feel in a space, and a sculpture will go a long way towards influencing that. ‘When we create gardens we create sensory experiences, and sculptures should help to build the mood and reinforce it,’ explains award-winning designer Chris Beardshaw, who rarely designs a garden without adding a sculptural element. So, where to begin? Choosing sculpture is much the same as choosing art for inside the home, and the overriding rule for both…

The dream for most garden owners is not to have a boundary at all – given a choice we would probably all prefer an unbroken ‘borrowed’ view, preferably of idyllic countryside or suitably breathtaking scenery. The reality for many of us is that some sort of boundary at the border of our gardens, or between us and our neighbours, is essential. So, given that most of us are not gazing at our estate over a hidden ha-ha, how best can we treat our boundaries for maximum aesthetic appeal? ‘A garden that has strong linear elements like a fence or a wall can give you that feeling of being slightly hemmed in,’ explains Helen Elks-Smith, of Elks-Smith Landscape & Garden Design (elks-smith.co.uk). ‘Try breaking it up a bit. So you might…

There is never a better time to press the refresh button than the start of a new year. Make it a resolution for 2026 to learn a skill by enrolling on a course or workshop that could be the catalyst for transforming an area of the home or garden, or even be the springboard to a new career. From online studying and one-day courses to residential retreats and year-long programmes, there is something to suit everyone, whether learning to make lampshades or growing vegetables. Why not sign up now and start sowing the seeds of a new creative endeavour, so you can reap the rewards this year and beyond. HOME COURSES Infuse interiors with unique character by learning how to design and make creative as well as practical schemes and…

One of the challenges of caring for historic gardens is the never-ending debate about how much you change. Should you strive to keep the garden exactly as it was, preserving its historic features as they were first installed? Or do you respect the past but look to the future, marshalling the garden through a gentle evolution as plants come and go and changing weather and circumstances affect their care. The historic gardens we feature in this issue constantly juggle with this question. At Goodnestone Park in Kent, head gardener Paul Bagshaw never loses sight of his predecessors’ gardening ethos of “a cottage garden writ large”, while at West Dean Gardens in West Sussex, Tom Brown follows a more experimental approach, taking the opportunity to educate the garden’s visitors and demonstrate…

IMAGE JONATHAN BUCKLEY Whether it’s polished to a glowing sheen or beautifully weather-aged verdigris, copper is a staple garden material that’s not only beautiful, but eminently practical, too. It’s a natural method of deterring slugs and snails, and it provides a sturdy material for garden ornaments, meaning there’s plenty of choice when it comes to this versatile metal. Dahlia on stake, £27.97. sarahraven.com.…

Denmans, the former home of the celebrated landscape designer John Brookes and plantswoman Joyce Robinson, offers a primer on contemporary design. Brookes was colour blind and so the garden emphasises masterful combinations of shape and texture, making it an excellent place to visit if you are looking for ideas for permanent planting as opposed to transient flowers. In keeping with the Denmans’ brief, head gardener Ryan Bodsworth here recommends ten plants for visual texture. How to Design a Garden (updated) by John Brookes MBE, edited by Gwendolyn van Paasschen, is on sale from 6 January. Denmans Garden, Denmans Lane, Fontwell, West Sussex BN18 0SU. Tel: 01243 278950; denmans.org 1 Magnolia grandiflora “Magnolia grandiflora thrive in the Denmans microclimate, providing excellent evergreen structure all year round. In summer the white blooms…

Spring: New Beginnings Spring is arguably the season when a greenhouse becomes worth its weight in gold. Anyone who has ever tried to germinate seedlings on a windowsill and found their home overflowing with the resulting plants will know only too well how useful a greenhouse would be for growing them on while the weather’s still too cold to put them outside. A greenhouse really does make growing from seed so much easier, and spring is the peak season for sowing. You might not have a heated greenhouse, but if it has an electricity supply you’ll be able to plug in a heated mat or a propagator, which will give you enough warmth to germinate seeds from around March onwards. The additional warmth afforded by the glass should be enough…

There was a time when almost every arable field in England was bounded by a hedgerow. It has been estimated that between 1750 and 1850, around 2,000 miles of hedgerow were being planted every year, linking field to field from East Anglia to the Cotswolds and from the Scottish Borders to the South West. By the late 19th century there were some 435,000 miles of managed hedgerow protecting valuable crops and livestock. Today, at around 250,000 miles, the total length of English hedgerows is almost half that of its 19th-century peak. The two World Wars and the subsequent loss of labour, as well as mechanisation and an increase in field size contributed to this. “Previously, once the harvest was done, labourers would be going out and working on the farm…

Planning and designing a kitchen that functions beautifully for all daily routines, as well as being a joy to spend time in, is a matter of considering how the room will be used by the whole family. ‘Start by thinking about how you live day to day – map your routines, the natural light, and how you move through the space,’ explains Natalie Hough, lead designer at The White Kitchen Company. ‘Plan your layout so that cooking, preparation, clean-up, and storage flow effortlessly, with walkways wide enough for everyone to move comfortably, even when the kitchen is busy.’ To ensure the kitchen has a desirable atmosphere, style and practicality are equally as important. ‘Consider how storage can work hardest for you with a place for everything (and a little extra),…

Deciding what type of flooring to opt for in different rooms can be tricky. ‘I think that the perfect flooring should feel as though it belongs to the architecture of the house, so that you feel it is grounding the space both practically and aesthetically,’ explains Hattie Hansard, interior designer at design studio Joanna Wood. ‘But it’s also about balancing beauty, proportion and texture with how a room is lived in.’ When considering types of flooring, Hansard looks at certain characteristics. ‘In a busy family kitchen, for example, a wide-plank oak floor with a matt finish brings warmth and texture while standing up to daily wear. We often like to mix up the arrangement of wood – parquet in a reception room and planks in a kitchen – but keep…

‘Don’t move, improve!’ is a line that will often lead to a conservatory extension, and it is true that conservatories can add valuable space to reception areas that may have come to feel a little cramped. Before committing to a conservatory though, give some thought to what it will be used for. Without a specific function, it can quickly turn into a messy no-man’s land of school satchels, outdoor shoes and dog beds. In addition to their conventional use as kitchen-dining or living room extensions, conservatories for gardeners could include benches for keeping tender plants that might scent the room, a geranium collection, or potted citrus trees. Conservatories are ideal for this purpose, since most need some heating to be used comfortably all year round, whether that is from underfloor…

‘Any opportunity to use water should be taken.’ So wrote Dame Sylvia Crowe in her seminal book, Garden Design, found on every garden designer’s bookshelf. It is a maxim that many of us follow, although most designers will also heed the caveat Crowe added: ‘provided it can be suited to the particular circumstances.’ As with so many aspects of design, making sure a new water feature suits the scale of the site and the location planned for it really is the key. Whether opting for quiet reflection or playful splashing jets, the moods water can create in the garden are as diverse as the forms it can take. ‘It adds a lovely extra dimension; both the sound and the sight of it creates a very romantic atmosphere, I think,’ says…

Alongside wet and windy weather, February will often bring bright sunshine, not a cloud in the blue, blue sky. Suddenly the catkins are here, the days are getting just that little bit lighter, and spring feels like it’s but a hop and a skip away. It isn’t. We could easily still have snow, but a little delusion goes a long way. The February round of pruning begins in earnest on one of those bright sunny days. I tend to get the wisteria out of the way first – it’s always the big one. Despite my best efforts in summer, it always takes a lot of untangling to get it back to a framework and to ‘flatten’ it a bit against the wall. I usually think I’ve finished, but then there’s…

Primroses are one of the earliest flowers to appear each year. Their name is derived from the Latin phrase prima rosa, literally meaning the ‘first rose’ of the year. Our native primrose, Primula vulgaris, is a woodlander with pale yellow flowers that open just before the leafy canopy unfolds overhead. Out in the garden, primroses enjoy moist soil and dappled shade underneath, or close to, deciduous trees and shrubs. They tend to suffer in hot, dry weather. Because their saucer-shaped flowers are easily accessible and early to appear, they help to sustain our early-flying bees. Primroses have a clever trick up their sleeve when it comes to being pollinated. There are two distinctly different types of flower forms found on separate plants, known as thrum-eyed and pin-eyed. Roughly half of…

When I entered the world of snowdrops over 30 years ago, I quickly came into contact with some formidable female galanthophiles. They often wore hats and they nearly always had a silver snowdrop brooch pinned to their lapel as a personal badge of honour. They were all feisty women to a one, although they often had hearts of gold once they realised that you were just as keen on snowdrops as they were. Without them, we’d have far fewer snowdrops than we do. Margaret Owen (1930–2014), who gardened at The Patch in Aston Pigott in Shropshire, was a farmer’s wife. She always wore a hat and it was often adorned with a jaunty ‘Robin Hood’ feather for effect. Our paths first crossed at the February 1997 RHS show at Vincent…

Early June in the Dolomites. Out on a hike, I’m amazed by the abundance of the high Alpine meadows stretched out before me. A thousand mauve dashes of scented orchids, shoal upon shoal of clear blue harebells wavering on delicate stems, the shredded yellow petals of arnica spinning like parasols in the sun. Towering above the flickering tapestry, stately and improbably refined in this wild mountain context, is a grove of martagon lily. At the top of each erect stem is a clutch of pendent buds in a soft dark pink. Further down, a dozen flowers have sprung open. The speckled petals are reflexed, the bright, orange-tipped anthers dangling down like silken tassels: each flower is the perfect illustration of its common name, Turk’s cap lily. Lilium martagon is native…

It can be easy to focus on practicality in ancillary rooms, but Cath Beckett, co-founder of design studio Yellow London, considers atmosphere just as important: ‘We believe the perfect “engine room” should feel as calm and considered as any main living space.’ She takes different approach for each type of ancillary room: ‘In a boot room, we find that durable finishes and well-planned storage create order and ease, while a utility benefits from a simple layout with appliances neatly concealed. Pantries work best when cool, organised and easy to navigate, and wine cellars come to life through soft lighting and beautiful displays. When those details come together, the space is both practical and stylish without compromising on functionality.’…

Anew greenhouse will likely be the biggest – and most exciting – purchase a gardener ever makes. For many of us, the prospect of having our own greenhouse is the zenith, the Holy Grail, the thing that makes our gardens complete. While most specialist greenhouse suppliers can build bespoke models, making a greenhouse unique need not mean a one-off design. It could simply be a case of customising an ‘off-the-peg’ greenhouse and fitting it with the perfect combination of accessories to suit. ‘I always tell people that taking your time over your decision is so important,’ says Nelly Hall, creative director at Alitex (alitex. co.uk). ‘Don’t rush it. Gather plenty of colour samples and mark the greenhouse out using sticks, canes or rope to help you establish a sense of…