REAL readers' gardens!

When writer Sheila M Averbuch and her husband moved into their Pencaitland home in East Lothian over 20 years ago, the garden was little more than a flat upper lawn with a steep slope down to the bung

Purple punctuates the planting: here an acer, verbena and some pinky-purple crinum, or swamp lily, stand out

As the long nights shorten, Mounton House garden quietly emerges from winter with delicate sprinklings of white narcissi, Scilla siberica and crocuses through the lawns. Daphnes fill the air with frag

Planting schemes should never stand still, so let’s reassess, reshape and reinvigorate

In spring, a beautiful eastern redbud tree (Cercis canadensis), its branches clothed from trunk to tip with cerise-purple flowers, steals the show at Sue Martin’s cottage garden in Cranbrook, Kent. It