Soft landscaping

A garden arbour

How to make a garden arbour and tunnel using natural materials

Taxus baccata (Yew), a perfect hedging plant

Hedging: 30 top plants for a hedge

Mixed borders at Gravetye Manor garden

Garden border ideas: 16 for the garden

Learn how to lay a hedge using traditional craftsmanship and hedge laying skills.

How to lay a hedge

Lawn grass by Jonas Weckschmied © Unsplash

Soft landscaping

Best grass seed for your garden

Marian Boswell's layered border planting plan

Garden border ideas How to create a mixed border planting plan

Stavordale Priory

Design Solutions: Topiary

Naturalised crocus planted in a lawn under a mature tree framing a typical Cotswold house in the distance

A Cotswold rectory garden with topiary and early spring bulbs

Lilium Martagon

The best plants for winter seedheads

In a hilltop location, bands of Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Rosea’, Phlomis russeliana and self-seeded Lychnis coronaria support each other in a densely planted flower garden. The sun is setting through a Catalpa bignonioides and great plumes of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’ hide the parking area.

How to create a flower-filled hillside garden

With no hedges or boundary trees, the garden is open to the surrounding landscape and feels very much part of it, especially as the fluid planting has been designed to give the romantic, gauzy feel of a wildflower meadow but with a longer season of interest and a greater variety of plant type and form. Here, Sisyrinchium striatum, Lupinus ‘Noble Maiden’ and Phlomis russeliana catch the eye.

Informal planting for an idyllic Cotswold garden

Great Dixter

Control of nature: how gardening is about shaping the natural world

Sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus 'Matucana'.

Annual climbers: 21 of the best annual climbers to plant

Pennisetum orientale 'Tall Tails'

Garden border ideas Pennisetum for late summer borders

Digitalis pupurea 'Gloxinioides'

The best plants for a cottage garden