
Hi there,
my name is Hilary and I’m from London, England.
I have loved English gardens since my childhood. I spent the school holidays at our family country house in Kent. The garden was huge with lawns, flowers, trees, fruit and vegetables. My siblings and I always had to help in the garden. The best part for me was picking the fruit and veg, because you could eat as you picked – there’s nothing better than fresh fruit direct from your own garden! I remember the gorgeous smell of roses and sweet peas in the garden and in the house. As a family, we visited gardens every now and then and brought various ideas back with us. I have loved continuing these traditions with my own children in Kent and Cornwall.
So, I wanted to share with you why the English garden is so special.
The garden
When you think of an English garden, the words – colourful flowers, sweet-smelling plants, fruit trees and rain come to mind, plus practical matters like cared-for lawns, flowerpots and rain barrels. Rain barrels and English gardens go together like scones and clotted cream or warm beer and pubs. No English garden is complete without a rain barrel! After all the English are nothing if not practical! What could be better than having your own wooden rain barrel with the name, “Great Britain”? More from this subject later.
I love visiting English gardens. I spent a lot of time with my children and friends in various gardens in southern England. There is no better way to spend a day from Spring to Autumn. Yes, it’s always preferable when it’s sunny, but the main thing is that it doesn’t rain. In my opinion, wet weather and garden visits don’t go together at all! The children could run around and the adults could appreciate the flowers and trees, at the same time wishing our gardens could look as good. One can but dream! Afterwards we would go into the café to get something to eat and drink such as a cup of coffee and a piece of cake or flapjack.


The two styles of English gardens
It’s true that English gardens and parks are world renowned. Many tourists who travel to England want to visit them too. It’s hard to believe that the visitor number of international tourists is now up to the 11 million mark. Perhaps you’re one of them or would like to pay a visit yourself? Now, here is a short history showing why these gardens are so popular.
Today if we speak of the so-called ”English Gardens”, then we are looking at two different garden styles which developed from the 18th century onwards. The one is the “English country garden or park”, mostly connected to a castle or country house, and the other is the “English cottage garden” usually attached to a country cottage. Although anyone can create a cottage garden themselves in their own garden. Both have their own characteristics and designs, and they look good the whole year round, but they are at their best in the summer.
How can you visit these gardens and houses?
This is possible through the many charities and gardens: for example, ‘The National Trust’, ‘English Heritage’ and ‘The Woodland Trust’. You can either buy a day’s ticket or an annual membership for you or the whole family. The ‘National Garden Scheme’ allows people to open their private gardens to the public – more than 3,500 a year.
These parks are still loved by the locals. For those who live in high-rise flats, the gardens are even more important. At lunchtime during the week, the parks are full of office workers enjoying their lunch, the fresh air and the green open spaces. At weekends families and groups of friends of all ages go to the park to relax, have fun and have a picnic. Many children have learnt to ride their bike there. Besides the rolling green lawns and the football pitches, there are often a lake, playgrounds for the children and an array of trees and flowers. These days more and more people work from home and can therefore enjoy spending more time in the parks.

World famous garden style
So why is the English garden so famous? Firstly, the climate is important because England has a very favourable climate. It is often cloudy and not so hot. Therefore, the plants can flourish in the often cooler climate. Yes, I know, lots of people believe it rains continuously in England, but that isn’t true! Plants always need water and nowadays people are buying more and more rain barrels. Rain butts are so practical especially when they are made out of wood like oak. Now comes the question – why wood? Well, it is definitely waterproof because the water in the wooden barrel swells the wooden staves, ensuring a watertight seal. In addition, wooden barrels are, without question, the most sustainable type of water collector, as wood is after all a renewable raw material. Wood stores all the CO2 it collects until it rots or is burnt. A wooden barrel can always be re-used which is brilliant for the environment!
Secondly, what is so special about this style? Often the best ideas are those which develop slowly. The English Garden style has developed over hundreds of years into the popular and recognisable style of today. So how did it happen?
It is hard to believe that the British haven’t always been interested in gardening. The Romans probably created the first gardens in England and brought the garden design with them from Italy. They built a closed inner courtyard which contained statues, springs, pools and plants. Many people would maybe not believe that the plants used included lavender, ivy and rosemary which are still popular today and found in every garden. After the Romans left England, the Anglo Saxons weren’t so interested in gardening, possibly because they were too busy waging wars!
Everything changed when the idealised ‘natural’ look came into fashion at the beginning of the 18th century. The English Garden developed a more ‘natural’ style in revolt against the architectural gardens which contained straight-lined patterns, sculptures and unnatural tree formations.
Who was responsible for this new garden style which revolutionised the English landscape and architectural style for ever? His name was Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown who was perhaps the most influential in this new design for the English country garden. He changed the whole English garden culture from its more formal roots to something that imitated nature. Nature was everything to him. He was called Capability Brown because he would say to his clients that their garden ‘has great capabilities for improvement.’
The style became more natural: the lines were no longer straight but curved and wandering, the rectangular shapes were replaced by more natural and round edges. The garden was opened up and connected to the landscape. This style is still popular today and much appreciated. He had many rich clients and a few of his gardens have survived which can still be visited, because he was responsible for 170 (known) garden renovations.
Now comes the question, ‘Where can I visit these gardens?’
That easy! Many garden styles have been lost over the centuries, but you can still see examples of his work in England if you visit Blenheim Palace, Burghley House, Petworth House and Longleat. This garden style can also be seen in Germany! Examples include the Berlin Potsdamer Gärten, the Schwetzinger Schlossgarten and the Englischer Garten in Munich.
The cottage garden style was developed further during the course of the 19th century from the original farm and cloister gardens of the Middle Ages. The poor were given a piece of land on which they could plant a mixture of vegetables, flowers, fruit trees etc and they were able to live off the proceeds. During the industrial revolution in the Victorian era, people became richer and were able to spend more time and money. The result was that the cottage garden became even more popular during the 1800s. The cottages are usually very pretty and the planting works because it is very informal.
In short, it concerns ‘a garden’ created next to a house, in which the planting is informal and looks totally uncontrived, full of flowers, vegetables and fruit trees with climbing plants and trellises. Even today people are keen to have a cottage garden as it looks so romantic.
The Victorians loved flower beds packed with flowers of exotic hues and used greenhouses to start them off. The idea of the cottage garden was developed further in the 20th century by Gertrude Jekyll who popularised the perennial border and the planning of a garden based on colour schemes. There are many such gardens in country houses and private gardens. A flower border is both popular and practical as the planting can be changed every year.



Your own garden
If someone would like to create their own cottage garden, there are various flowers which are typical, for example a variety of bulbs, lady’s mantle, foxgloves, carnations (Dianthus), peonies, roses, phlox, delphinium, hollyhocks, lavender, herbs, primroses, flowering sweet peas and hydrangeas. If you choose plants that flower in different seasons, then you can enjoy the flowers throughout the year. Very often today, gardens are a mixture of both English garden styles.
Maybe you don’t have a garden, or your garden is tiny! That’s no problem as you can make an amazing English garden in very small spaces such as on a balcony or a terrace by using a mix of planters, flowerpots and tubs. You could even make a garden on a much smaller scale in a window box! A girl friend only had garden tubs and flowerpots in her garden, growing flowers and vegetables all year round. The garden looked wonderful and she was able to pick lots of veg.
Capability Brown often incorporated a lake into a garden design, but the gardens he designed were on a mammoth scale. However, luckily, there is a simpler option so you don’t have to spend the whole weekend digging a big hole in the garden! You could use a wooden tub instead, made out of seasoned oak staves or a flowerpot produced out of a half a used wine or single malt whisky barrel. Then in a few hours, you can make a mini pond. Both options are very robust and watertight, available in various sizes.
It is definitely lovely to enjoy such a garden, but in order to have one, don’t forget what it entails. The downside of having your own garden is the accompanying hard work. Luckily most owners love the work and always want to improve their gardens. You only have to look through the list of the various TV and radio gardening programmes. After supper on Friday evenings, about 2.5 million people watch the TV gardening programme, ‘Gardeners World’ or on Saturday mornings, 2 million listeners tune into the radio programme, ‘Gardeners Question Time’.
Why do so many people love these programmes? You might say that many are interested in new ideas because there is a huge element of competitiveness! So, people spend, per head, about 760 euros a year, which equates to about 19 million euros in garden centres, supermarkets or online. Everyone wants to have the best garden in the area! There are jokes about the English cutting their lawns with a pair of scissors to achieve the perfect finish!
What do people buy? Choices include flowers, plants, trees and building materials to achieve a new look. Today, most people don’t have a Greek temple in their garden, but everyone needs new planters such as flowerpots or tubs for plants, shrubs and trees to make it more colourful on the terrace or on the lawn. All plants and trees grow like mad, so many have to be re-planted in new tubs in the Spring. Luckily in the barrel-shop, there is a large range of tubs in various sizes made from air-dried Douglas fir or oak from the Palatinate Forest or produced from used barrels. All kinds of new looks are possible in the garden.
At the same time, all gardens need water. The effects of climate change mean gardens need even more water because summers in Europe are becoming hotter and drier. Water storage is becoming a hot potato. A practical and sustainable solution is to use a wooden rain barrel in the garden. Even better and more practical would be to use a string of connected rain barrels to increase capacity if you had the space. In this way, you could use rainwater to do a large percentage of the watering. I don’t believe many people want to lug a watering can from the house or garage up and down the garden! Much too much work!
Okay, so what type of rain barrel? I’ve already mentioned the element of competitiveness to always have something new and different in the garden. In the barrel-shop, there is a selection of rain barrels made from used whisky and wine barrels which herald from various distilleries and countries and every type has an individual look. But what could be better in an English garden than an original British whisky barrel? We have such a barrel, called the ‘Great Britain’ that was filled with Islay Single Malt. This barrel is multi-functional as it’s not only a rain collector, but it also looks fantastic, represents so much history, comes from a romantic landscape, is very durable thanks to soaking up the whisky during the long aging process and it still smells of whisky! What a mix! It is definitely an original!
So, you have chosen the barrel, but then you have to consider the size. Luckily the rain barrels in the barrel-shop are available in various sizes ranging from 125 litres to 600 litres and finishes. At the end of the day, it is a question of taste, practicality and whether it fits in the garden – size-wise and look. But sometimes the quote: ‘the bigger the better’ hits the mark.
Don’t forget that rainwater is so much healthier for the garden and much cheaper than tap water. Having a few rain barrels in the garden saves water, money and time. A win-win situation for all!

Happy gardening! ‘Til next time!