The Best British Gardens to Visit this Spring

Now that spring is rumbling to life, the season has come for long walks in blossoming nature. Considering Britain’s love of gardening, the time is ripe to plan a visit to its best green spaces. 

Here, journalist, educator and author of Wonderlands: British Garden Designers at Home Clare Coulson shares her recommendations for where to sit under cherry blossom trees, observe bearded irises or bask in a meadow – and why the U.K. is so proud of its gardening heritage.

When you think about gardens in the U.K. that people can explore for free this spring, which ones immediately come to mind?

CLARE COULSON We are very lucky in the U.K. to have the most incredible public gardens and parks. In London, I love Inner Temple Garden, which is tucked away between the River Thames and the Strand – it’s beautifully looked after by head gardener Sean Harkin, and it’s extraordinarily bucolic with meadows in the summer and amazing pot displays.

Which one do you plan to visit next and why?

CC It’s not a ‘free’ garden but I am so excited to visit Benton End in Suffolk, which was once the home of artists Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines, which became an incredible hot spot of horticulture and art during the ’40s and ’50s. Morris bred bearded irises and collected plants from around Europe on his winter travels. As an artist, he was an amazing colorist and painter of plants, as well as landscapes. A few years ago, the house and garden were ‘gifted’ to the Garden Museum and head gardener James Horner has been slowly and carefully coaxing the gardens back to life, which had really been ‘sleeping’ in the decades since Morris died. It reopens this June.

Tell me what drew you to writing your book Wonderlands? What was it like going from writing about fashion to horticulture?

CC It was a slow transition and, really, I still write about both, even if horticulture is my favourite. I am always fascinated by designers and how they think – something that was definitely nurtured while I was a fashion journalist, which I did for the first 15 years of my career. They’re such transferable skills, so now I talk to garden designers and landscape

architects about their process instead of fashion designers. Wonderlands is really about what those designers do in their own spaces, at home, which is really more telling than what they do for clients, as their own gardens are often a distillation of their most loved plants, experimental ideas – like test grounds for new ways of working.

When you explore a new garden, do you “read” it in the way you do a clothing collection?

CC Yes, I think you do read a garden in a similar way – obviously, they are completely different, and in a garden there’s always a balance with the environment and nature, attempting to control it to a degree. So, a garden has a lot more ‘moving parts’ than fashion, in my view – seasons, wildlife, extreme weather, plants that decide to die. But there are also many parallels: in a garden, you are looking at the overall effect and how it makes you feel, the structure and design – how a designer uses the space (and negative space), how they create a journey through the garden, what plants they’ve used, how they combine them. And also the sense of place: how a garden sits within a wider context.

Why do you think the U.K. ended up with such a rich culture of publicly accessible gardens and parks? 

CC It’s many factors that all come together. Firstly, we have an amazing temperate climate that’s perfect for growing almost any plants – for now, at least. Even on the west coast of Scotland, some gardens have microclimates where they can grow tender plants. But also, the country went through early industrialisation and the societal shifts that followed created middle classes with houses and gardens to tend. At that same time, especially in the 19th century, there was an intense period of plant hunters who travelled across the globe and brought back many of the garden plants that we have today. There are similar gardening cultures in parts of Europe: the Netherlands, Germany, parts of France, but nothing quite like the gardening culture that we have here.

Which approach to garden design do you like best across Europe?

CC I don’t think there’s one design – there are all different types of gardens I love – but my favourites tend to be slightly wild, and really immersive. Great Dixter is probably my favourite; it’s the most inspiring garden to visit, it’s experimental, wildly colourful, joyous but set within really strong bones, an Arts & Crafts layout. 

For his FW26 women’s collection, Dior designer Jonathan Anderson drew inspiration from garden promenades, and how women would dress to be seen as they strolled through the park. Do you pay attention to what people wear in gardens? 

CC To be honest, no – I am usually trying to avoid other people in gardens. One of the amazing things about writing about gardens is that I often get to see them with no one there, which is really the best.

Do you see any interesting similarity between horticulture and fashion, perhaps in the sense of cycles, trends or heritage?

CC All design reflects the world around it in some way, so yes, there are parallels if you look for them. I am not really interested in garden trends – but there are patterns in the types of plants or colour palettes that become really sought after. The rise in craft and the handmade in fashion is echoed in gardens where there’s been a renewed interest in handcrafted details.

For readers who may be visiting the UK in April or May, which lesser-known free gardens or parks would you recommend that offer something special, whether it’s extraordinary planting, a sense of history, or simply a beautiful place to wander? 

CC The royal parks across London are amazing, I love St James’s. But there are hidden gardens all over the city. In spring, Mount Street Gardens, tucked away in Mayfair, is a beautiful place to sit under cherry trees in blossom. For something completely different, the gardens at the Barbican and the Barbican Conservatory show how radically plants can transform and complement brutalist architecture.

Wonderlands by Clare Coulson (£40, Hardie Grant). Photography © Éva Németh