Gardenig in county Kent. Tips & Guides

Best places to see snowdrops 

Ground cover plants are low-growing plants that spread easily to cover areas where nothing much wants to grow.

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This March we celebrate the return of Gardeners’ World to our screens by showing you just some of the gardens featured on the show, which you can visit using our 2-for-1 Gardens Entry Card.

Image: West Dean Gardens. Credit: West Dean Gardens May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them. To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’re going to share some of the most influential women within horticulture and their stories.

Often, these are timeless items that have truly stood the test of time, but there’s also room for innovations that have transformed the way we garden – battery-powered tools that have done away with electric cables and noisy, smelly two-stroke fuel, for example. We asked the country’s top head gardeners which tools they couldn’t contemplate gardening without.

Cherry blossom on show in a west London garden by Sheila Jack

Made up of mellow stone buildings, many of which are medieval, the city of Oxford is the ideal base for an exploration of Oxfordshire. The city itself is picturesque, but also compact, making it easy to walk around and take in the many sights on offer. See the college buildings that make up the University of Oxford, visit the world’s oldest museum, the Ashmolean, to see its Egyptian and Anglo-Saxon treasures, and admire Oxford Botanic Garden, Britain’s oldest botanical garden, right in the heart of the city.

Join our tailor-made tour of beautiful gardens in Kent and Sussex, full of early summer colour, and enjoy three nights at the four-star East Sussex National Hotel.

Here are key autumn garden tips plus 7 top suggestions of plants to plant now.

It was in The Pickwick Papers that Dickens wrote the often quoted line: “Kent, sir. Everybody knows Kent – apples, cherries, hops, and women.” The county is still referred to as the Garden of England, even though the amount of fruit traditionally farmed there has declined over the decades. Perhaps it’s still used so widely because some of the country’s most celebrated properties and gardens are to be found in Kent.

It was in The Pickwick Papers that Dickens wrote the often quoted line: “Kent, sir. Everybody knows Kent – apples, cherries, hops, and women.” The county is still referred to as the Garden of England, even though the amount of fruit traditionally farmed there has declined over the decades. Perhaps it’s still used so widely because some of the country’s most celebrated properties and gardens are to be found in Kent.

If you look up garden ruins or follies in the dictionary, you will be told that they are ‘costly ornamental buildings with no practical purpose.’

Victoriana Nursery Gardens is a family-run business. They like to help out local schools where they can – gardening is a fun and healthy activity for kids, helping them to learn about the environment and encouraging them to eat their veggies. They’re sponsoring a school garden this year, providing everything the school needs to get their veg plot up and running.

Gleaning is an ancient concept – it’s mentioned in the Bible. Local people would have the right (or the farmer would have the legal obligation to allow them) to enter a farmer’s fields after the harvest to collect any remaining food. It was a a useful source of food for many in need. In the intervening millennia it has gradually disappeared, with changing land use and laws and (I assume) farming practices.

Last autumn I started thinking about what I wanted to grow this year, and I decided that – given the current Brexit situation – it might be wise to have a garden of more traditional crops, ones that we enjoy eating, and which would give us fresh food in the event that all of the imports are stuck in a big parking lot in Kent awaiting customs checks. Since then I haven’t given it too much thought, mostly because I’ve been waiting for the government to get its act together and decide what’s happening.

One morning, early in 2012, my then husband asked me whether I could be happy without a garden. I said I didn’t think so. By the beginning of May that year he had left – he moved in to a rented house in Cornwall that (somewhat ironically) has a garden. In the intervening four years, I have actually never been without a garden, although when I was a student in Kent I was a long way away from it. But I never felt like gardening, which amounts to the same thing.

New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation by John Grimshaw, Ross Bayton and illustrated by Hazel Wilks. Amazon

Britain has some of the best gardens in the world. The choice of which to visit is far larger than this selective list but at least it gives you somewhere to start planning this years outings.

Requiring less watering and weeding than any other type of garden, a gravel garden is ideal for anyone with a busy lifestyle. Comprising freely draining soil covered in gravel, through which suitable plants grow, the only effort required is in its creation; after that, this contemporary form of garden largely looks after itself.

“Of all the kinds of pickle I make,” says Nancy, “they are my favorite. They are very sweet, I admit, but I think that’s why they are eaten with simply bread and butter, to balance out the sweetness.” (I had them that way for lunch Saturday. My first pickle sandwich ever was perfect, with a slice of goat cheddar and a few cherry tomatoes on the side.)Nancy’s copy of the original recipe came from her mother, who typed it out and then added handwritten comments in the margins.  (That’s her recipe card, above; click on it to enlarge.)“Mom got it from our over-the-back-fence neighbor in Michigan,” Nancy recalls.  “Viola Whitacre and her husband, Archie, lived in the house behind ours. Archie was the gardener; Viola kept the house and was t

So, how are we all doing? Thank God I’m already divorced (said in full knowledge my ex-husband would say the same thing about me so it’s a fair comment).