Earliest gardening memory Helping my ouma and oupa water their garden in South Africa. The fruits of their labours – mangoes, pomegranates, figs – were abundant. First plant love Papaver rhoeas, the c

Nick Dakin-Elliot, who gardens in Tuscany, is still moved by the Italian hilltop gardens that command some of the most beautiful views in the world

The garden was a blank canvas when I first moved in. A single tree. A lawn invaded by alkanet. London clay so hard you couldn’t push a spade in. I was more concerned with urgent matters such as the de

The head gardener at London’s Barbican Conservatory on its ongoing renovation – and why you shouldn’t give up on houseplants I grew up in Poland where my grandma used to take me to her allotment and I

When garden designers Julie Toll and Ian Kitson moved to Biggerside, a 17th-century farmhouse in Cumbria, they brought with them not just a shared vision, but the combined expertise needed to meld thi

Nearly 20 years ago, we bought a house in north London, not just for the building itself, but because hidden behind the terraced row was a secluded garden – a delightful surprise in this central Londo