A celebration of a beloved and uniquely British garden style featuring cottage gardens from around the country. Features gardens created by famous writers including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter.
Provides introduction to the world of words for young children just starting to learn French. This title includes over 500 words, each illustrated with Jo Litchfield's hand-made models and accompanied by an example of usage. It contains a French grammar guide and a French to English word list.
Some of Britain's surviving orchards are almost six hundred years old and whether laden with summer fruit or stripped bare by the winter are places of great beauty. This book reveals the story and rich diversity of Britain's apple, pear and cherry orchards.
A whimsical and beautiful book celebrating these hidden gems of the National Trust – from specially made secret gardens to overlooked corners of famous gardens and re-discovered lost gardens.Stunning photographs of the Trust’s idiosyncratic gardens are accompanied by a light text meditating on the magic of the secret garden, and bringing in fascinating historical and botanical details. The book will include secret mazes, hidden corners, walled gardens, lost gardens, gardens that are only open one day a year, follies, orchards, dens, memorials, strange statues, stumperies, huts, ice houses, wendy houses, fairy gates and pixie houses. The gardens featured include the palm-filled Overbeck’s in Devon, Peckover House in Cambridgeshire, which bursts with exotic specimens found on Victorian plant-hunting expeditions, and Monk’s House in East Sussex, where the garden proved a refuge for Virginia Woolf.
Hidden behind the high walls surrounding Buckingham Palace is one of London's most beautiful gardens, the venue for a busy calendar of royal events, including the much-loved tradition of The Queen's Garden Party. Award-winning photographer John Campbell has spent a year taking pictures of that garden for this richly illustrated book, revealing the changes that occur through the seasons, as massed bulbs give way to the roses of high summer and the turning trees of autumn. The text, by gardening writer Claire Masset, follows a year in the life of the royal garden, and is full of insights and practical tips from the Head Gardener, Mark Lane. Enlivened by royal anecdote, the book reveals the skills of the gardeners who have tended these London acres over the centuries and the tastes and keen horticultural interests of successive monarchs, such as James I whose campaign to introduce silk production to Britain was the inspiration for Buckingham Palace's National Collection of Mulberries. Today this hidden oasis in the centre of London is home to an increasingly diverse array of flora and fauna, including the royal beehives located on an island in the garden's 3.5-acre lake, and is a source of ideas and inspiration for every gardener, equally applicable to a homely plot as to the garden of a royal palace
If ever the idea of Britishness could be distilled into liquid form it would be into the quintessential cup of tea. This title guides us through the evolution of tea from its beginnings as an exclusive imported luxury found only in up market coffee houses to its firm establishment in every household of Britain.
As this beautifully illustrated guidebook shows, Nuffield Place is full of charming detail. From amusing anecdotes to quirky 1930s artefacts and surprising nooks and crannies, the house is a delight to discover. The garden, which was particularly treasured by Lady Nuffield, combines lawns, herbaceous borders, yew hedges, a pergola and rock garden.
Hill Top is a shrine to Beatrix Potter, each room imbued with her spirit. The house she bought with the royalties from her first and most famous book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, became her cabinet of curiosities, a giant dolls house where she would arrange and re-arrange her things as she liked. Every painting, piece of furniture and antique had symbolic or emotional meaning to her. Featuring new photography, illustrations from the little books and photographs of Beatrix and her family, this new guidebook traces the fascinating story of this extraordinary woman. Peppered with quotes from Beatrix, it reveals her lonely London childhood, how she became a successful author and illustrator, and how she fell in love with the Lakes and acquired Hill Top. Readers will discover her lovely farmhouse and cottage garden and see how her surroundings inspired many scenes in her little books, and how, in later life, she reinvented herself as a farmer, landowner, conservationist and National Trust supporter. Today, it is thanks to her that the Lake District remains one of the most spectacular corners of England.
A visually stunning celebration of England's favourite flower, the rose. The National Trust owns 30 of the most famous and beloved rose gardens in this country, from Mottisfont to Sissinghurst. There are also features on 20 iconic rose varieties, with advice on how you can grow them yourself.
A beautifully illustrated compilation exploring the mystery of what makes us love gardening, via history, science, art and philosophy.