There is something particularly enjoyable about returning to a garden once it’s had time to settle; when the structure has softened, the planting has grown into itself, and the space has found its rhythm and flow.

This spring, I revisited the gardens at The Crown & Garter in Inkpen, Berkshire, a 17th-century coaching inn set within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape.  Originally redesigned in 2023, our brief was to create gardens that felt generous and unshowy, rooted in their rural surroundings and able to welcome guests comfortably throughout the year.

If you want more hellebores in your garden, low maintenance, lovely perennials which gently sing from the side-lines and from dark corners during late winter and early spring offering the prettiest of flowers, read on for ideas and suggestions.

A Garden Tour to accompany our Garden Gathering in aid of Horatio’s Garden. A wonderful opportunity to bring friends together to raise money for a great cause that nurtures the wellbeing of people after spinal injury in beautiful, vibrant sanctuaries within the heart of NHS spinal injury centres. It’s also a chance to have some fun, some tea and cakes and share how my own garden nurtures me.

It’s the perfect weekend for some romantic snowdrop spotting: the countryside is carpeted in small, elegant, Giselle white snowdrops which are the first signs the season is turning and spring will come. Whether you seek the expansive and breathtaking or the rare and ravishing, now is the moment to hunt down snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in the wild or the glorious gardens of galanthophiles to enjoy their sheer beauty and fragility.