Soft landscaping

Malus 'Evereste'

Trees for small gardens

Taxus baccata (Yew), a perfect hedging plant

Hedging: 30 top plants for a hedge

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

How to lay a hedge

Decorative Ivy

The best ivy for your garden - top variegated and decorative cultivars

Pennisetum orientale 'Tall Tails'

Pennisetum for late summer borders

Ula Maria garden

Creating a private garden

A garden arbour

How to make a garden arbour and tunnel using natural materials

Mixed borders at Gravetye Manor garden

Garden border ideas: 16 for the garden

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

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