Gardens to visit in the Cotswolds

I first learned the fundamentals of kitchen gardening from my mother, who learned it from her father, a passing-on of traditional skills repeated down through countless generations.

Vote now, and pick the garden you’d like to win this year’s People’s Choice award for the Gardens of the Year Competition 2023, sponsored by Yeo Valley. Take a look at this year’s finalists, and vote for your favourite below. Voting closes at noon on Monday 6 November.

While bird feeders are common in Britain’s gardens, bird baths are less so. Bird baths are a brilliant way of providing birds with a regular supply of clean water for both drinking and bathing. Bird baths become even more essential in the colder months when natural sources may be frozen or in the height of summer when water can be hard to come by.

Mainland UK is home to many natural treasures. While many are world-famous and are visited by millions of people each year, there are several that many haven’t even heard of, including some locals.

In the summer of 1863, a world-famous English botanist was pondering why the shoots of climbing plants twirl around as they grow. In this episode, join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores the fascinating world of plant movement, and what that has to do with the first plants that ever flew on NASA’s space shuttle.

Sometimes, you see a style that’s so over the top, with so many seemingly disconnected designs, that it's a miracle everything flows together so seamlessly. Case in point: the no-holds-barred look of British pop decor. The style combines the best of today’s trending aesthetics with a healthy dose of the posh past—and like all maximalist styles, it's all about the layers.

Boglarka Zilla Gulyas, University of Sheffield and Jill Edmondson, University of Sheffield

Cindy Strickland has shared on the GPOD before (Gardening for a Friend), and today she’s taking us along to visit a beautiful English garden.

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.

One of the most picturesque parts of England, the Yorkshire Dales have a reputation for bearing their own, distinctive character. Lying north-west of York, the region is defined by the Yorkshire Dales National Park, established in 1954. This striking landscape is overseen by three peaks, Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside. In summer, its steep-sided glacial valleys are filled with wildflower meadows, notably at Muker, a small village popular with hill walkers. Valleys are the defining feature here, and the term dale stems from the Old English for valley, but it is also similar to the Nordic term, dal. The Norsemen controlled much of this region in the 10th century, and their footprint lingers in local dialect: ‘beck’, from bekkr, meaning stream, and ‘fell’, from fjall, meaning hill, are just two examples. 

Indoor plants will instantly add some green to your living space, bringing the outside in and touching base with nature. And when it comes to plant pots to keep them in, there are plenty to choose from.