The English Garden

Enjoy over 60 beautiful gardens a year with The English Garden. Every issue features country, city, cottage and coastal gardens, with advice on how to recreate them. Be inspired by articles written by the country's top garden designers and discover the best plant varieties for your garden, chosen by expert nurserymen and plantspeople.

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The English Garden

This Month • Our guide to plants, people, gardens and events, tasks and shopping in April

People to Meet • Introducing the gardeners and public figures we most admire in British horticulture

Out & About • Unmissable events, news and the very best gardens to visit this month

Things to Do • April is a hectic month in the garden, and Jane Moore is pruning roses and hydrangeas, dividing iris and asters, chitting potatoes and sowing hardy annuals

Beautiful & Useful • New plants, books, tools and creative designs, plus shopping inspiration

Pretty in Pink • Reflect the warming shades of the spring garden in your home, with floral tablecloths, delicate china, and pastel-colored tableware in shades of pink. Just add finger sandwiches and a glass of chilled rosé for the perfect sophisticated spring tea party. Hopefully, you’ll get to enjoy the gentle spring sunshine, too. Set of four pink leaf napkins, £26. sarahk.co.uk

Wildest DREAMS • There’s nowhere quite like Wildside on the edge of Dartmoor, where a reimagining of different landscapes from around the world have been stitched together to form a beguiling dreamscape

Magic TOUCH • At Caisson House in Somerset, Phil and Amanda Honey have worked to carve a garden from the industrial landscape, balancing wildness with formality to ensure that the spell cast by this magical setting is never broken

Piece by PIECE • A fascinating jigsaw puzzle of a garden, Brow Cottage in Wiltshire tessellates its contrasting areas into one compact half-acre space, gradually revealing structure, colour and artistic flourishes in all their rich variety

BRIDGE TO THE PAST • Having returned to his family home of Bramdean House in Hampshire, Edward Wakefield has been keen to preserve the legacy of his grandparents and parents who had expertly created and developed this garden of rare and accomplished planting over 80 years

Sweetness & LIGHT • Fragrance and colour dominate the luminous Bedfordshire garden of Townsend Farmhouse, which has developed over 25 years in line with Indi Jackson’s own horticultural learning and is now a stalwart on the NGS scene, each season of openings culminating in a very special lantern festival

Spring FEVER • The rocky wooded garden of Maenan Hall winds its way up and down a Welsh hillside, and in April, with bluebells running riot beneath the emerging tree canopy and a cornucopia of rhododendrons to admire, it is little short of sublime

Full to the Brim • Cheerful blooms that will fill a gap with added interest are order of the day at the Bishop’s Palace, and head gardener James Cross has ten to recommend

Snowball Effect • Viburnums illuminate the spring garden with their pompon heads of dazzling, often fragrant, flowers. Find room for one of these graceful shrubs in your garden and you’re bound to want to add more

ALL CHANGE • As the British climate gets ever warmer, we increasingly need to look to plants that will survive and thrive in changing conditions – something that’s all the more important when considering those that are typically more long-lived. Here Ian Tocher suggests ten more resilient trees

The Life Aquatic • Ponds bring so much life to gardens – quite literally, when you consider the wildlife they attract. Add to that soothing reflections and the opportunity to grow a range of wonderful water-loving plants, and they become...