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 December

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

Jim’s Garden Diary • This month Jim Cable is planting a crab apple for its gorgeous golden-yellow fruits and sowing sweet peas to overwinter before being planted out in spring

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

Gifts for Gardeners • An elegant wool coat for chilly winter walks, a show-stopping candelabra for the New Year tablescape, a brand new trowel or a cosy pair of cotton pyjamas, Christmas is the perfect opportunity to treat the gardener in your life to the tools, accessories and treats that they’ll cherish for years to come. Festive red berry wreath, £48. mrsalice.com

Smart CASUAL • Elegant topiary and ordered formality underpin the aesthetic in the garden of Georgian Fittleworth House in West Sussex. But also at play is a wilder, looser flavour, encouraged by head gardener Mark Saunders in a bid to boost the land’s rich biodiversity

Hope Springs ETERNAL • Horatio’s Garden Scotland is a trove of sensory delights in winter, and for the patients of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital National Spinal Injuries Unit, its promise of a new season to come is imbued with a poignant symbolism

A Labour OF LOVE • Thirty years of planning, planting and waiting have paid off, and while maintaining the now-mature topiary in this Suffolk garden is a relentless task, on a crisp morning John and Jenny Brett feel it’s worth the effort

Little Italy • Filled with smart topiary, classic statuary and fragrant parterres, the garden at The Old Rectory in Surrey is Trudie and Tony Procter’s love letter to Italy, its style and influence inspired by the likes of Harold Peto’s Iford Manor and Villa Cetinale in Tuscany

Still Life • Longstock Park Water Garden in Hampshire is a visual treat at any time of year, but in the hush of deepest winter there’s a serene clarity to the picture-perfect waterscape that’s little changed in its century of existence

Winners Revealed • You voted in your thousands for the shortlisted entries in our competition to find the Nation’s Favourite Gardens of 2023. Here we announce the regional, public and overall winners

Secret Gardens • Big-name gardens feature in Sisley Garden Tours’ tailor-made trips, but it’s the under-the-radar private gardens created by passionate owners that so often steal the hearts of Sisley’s clients

Cutting a Dash • For a smart, sharp, structurally interesting winter garden, Hinton Ampner’s Jen Harbrow suggests architectural box alternatives for hedges and topiary

All I want for Christmas… • Gorgeously bushy Abies nordmanniana is the classic Christmas tree, but the genus offers many more delectable species and cultivars, often compact and available in a range of shapes and colours, making wonderful Christmas gifts in themselves

AN EYE FOR DETAIL • As the garden at RHS Wisley sinks into its winter slumber, hoarfrost picks out special textural details, allowing us to appreciate this underrated season as one of the most illuminating times of year

MAXIMISE YOUR POTENTIAL • A greenhouse will boost your growing space and...