Chelsea: Graham Ross' Survival Tips

Tips to survive a day at Chelsea.

Cloudehill

Jeremy Francis tells the story of his magnificent garden in ‘Cloudehill: A year in the garden’. In this extract he describes how a garden inspired by the golden days of Edwardian Arts and Crafts Design began to take shape in the rich moist soils of the Dandenong Ranges.

Cuttings from the Garden World

Here's what's happening  in the garden world this winter.

Drummond

Drummond Castle’s formal gardens, based on the flag of Scotland and the family’s own standard, are justly famous and surprisingly fun.

Five of the Best: Oudolf gardens

Piet Oudolf has changed the way we think about gardens. His planting designs of perennials and grasses are romantic, exciting, enriching and inspiring. These are some of our favourites.

Five of the best: rose gardens

Discover five of the best gardens to admire the beauty of roses.

Garden festival planner: Chaumont-sur-Loire Garden Festival

The Loire Valley is renowned as ‘France’s Garden’, and in summer it hosts an international design festival that imagines the future of gardening.

Garden festival planner: Chelsea Flower show

Chelsea is the prize bloom of the world's garden shows, and the reputation is well-deserved. Here Robin Powell shares her observations on what has been another breath-taking Chelsea Flower Show.

Garden Festival Planner: Floriade

In spring the national capital is all about Floriade. Here’s how to add more gardens to its tulip beds and party atmosphere.

Garden Festival Planner: Floriade Holland

In 2022 this huge, once-in-a-decade festival will focus on inspiring ways for city-dwellers to connect with the beauty of plants and gardens.

Garden Festival Planner: Hampton Court Flower Show

If the Chelsea Flower Show is the sophisticated sister, her younger sibling is bigger, more daring - and definitely friendlier.

Japan Spring Festivals

Once the cherry blossoms fall, Japan bursts into colour with azaleas, peonies and wisteria creating a crescendo of colour unknown to most international travellers - and not to be missed!

Garden Festival Planner: Nambour

Garden lovers flock to Nambour in winter for their fill of new plants, gadgets and ideas. Here’s how to turn a day at the show into a real garden festival.

Garden festival planner: Nelmac Garden Marlborough

The gates open on incredible private gardens in this New Zealand festival, which also offers workshops - Great Dixter’s Fergus Garrett is the keynote speaker this year - and a garden party at Wither Hills Winery.

Garden Ideas from Appletern Garden Festival, Holland

Visiting Appletern is like having your favourite garden magazine come to life. Around every corner of this vast garden showcase in Holland is a new page offering great ideas for your own garden: design, plants, planting combinations, paving options, sculpture, furniture and more.

Garden Road Trip South Coast

With verdant green dairy country on one side and pristine beaches on the other, the south coast of NSW is gorgeous country. Plan now to visit in spring, when open gardens add to the sights.

Garden Road Trip: Adelaide

Adelaide’s roses are a treat in both spring and in autumn, and there is plenty more to discover in a city that loves its gardens.

Goldfields

Great Dixter

Is this old place England’s most exciting contemporary garden?

How to: grow chocolate

Wherever we take travellers in the tropics, from Mexico to Singapore, the Daintree to Cuba, there is one tree that grabs their attention - cacao, the source of our lingering love, chocolate.

How to: style an ikebana

The key difference between an ikebana approach to flower arranging and a Western style is that in ikebana the focus is on line and space rather than mass. Instead of adding more flowers to make it look better, ikebana is about what can be taken away. The space between the elements is as important as the elements themselves.

Ideas from Marlborough

Marlborough's hills, valleys and coastlines have seen much change over the past two hundred years. Maori hunted flightless birds; squatters grew flax and farmed sheep for wool; a tinned rabbit industry briefly bloomed to deal with the rabbits introduced for ‘sport’ - until a shipload of tinned rabbit exploded in the Thames on its way to the London docks and now it’s wine that makes the region’s fortunes as the world continues to fall in love with the flavours of Marlborough savvy.

Ideas from Singapore

We grabbed some tropical inspiration in Singapore a few months ago when we took two groups of Ross Garden Tours travelers to the biennial Singapore Garden Festival.

Iguazu Falls

Iguazu is more than just a waterfall, says an exhilarated Robin Powell

In our garden: Wildwood

A cool-climate garden of five acres gives Sue and Wayne Tapping room to grow the beauties they love. Here they share what’s keeping them busy this spring

In the Garden: Broughton Hall

Find out what David Musker is up to at Broughton Hall in Victoria

In the Garden: Cruden Farm

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch’s much-loved garden is on the brink of its big show as spring begins.Head gardener Mitch Burns takes us behind the scenes.

In the garden: Highfields

As spring melts into the first days of summer Highfields is filled with the fragrance of roses, masses of floral colour and the murmur of the waterfall tumbling into the ponds.

In the garden: Red Cow Farm

In 1990, Ali Mentesh stood in the bald paddocks of Red Cow Farm and dreamed of a canopy of trees, a woodland-edged lake, and garden rooms fragrant with roses. In making the dream reality Ali turned himself into a garden designer sought-after for his imagination, and his hands-on experience of plants and how best to grow them.

In the garden: Retford Park

Rick Shepherd, head gardener at Bowral’s grand Retford Park, dishes the dirt on what goes on in the garden in spring.

Into Africa

Robin Powell thrills to the sights of the Masai Mara

Is Villa Gamberaia the most romantic garden in Italy?

We join a long line of world-weary travellers who have fallen for the charms of Villa Gamberaia hook, line and sinker.

Italian Lakes

Glamour and romance are the twin themes of a stay in Stressa. Robin Powell took a room with a view and was enchanted.

Jaipur - The Pink City

Bustle, colour, beauty and great stories: Peter Whitehead reveals some of the allure of Jaipur, and tells why he can’t wait to take Ross Garden tours first trip to India.

Japan in Autumn

Cherry blossom season might make all the headlines but Graham says that in autumn Japan glows with a gentle beauty.

Japanese Gardens

We love Japanese gardens so much we visit twice a year: in spring to catch the fleeting magic of the cherry blossom season; and again in autumn when the maples and chrysanthemums are at their best. 

La Vie En Rose

The charms of French country living inspired Marian Somes to create her own version at her beautiful garden Picardy in the Gippsland hills.

Longwood

Money isn't an essential ingredient of a great garden, but my, can’t it help! Michael McCoy reports on how the dollars show at the lavishly loved Longwood Gardens.

Macquarie Island

Hobart’s Botanic Gardens is home to an unusual glasshouse with a collection of plants from Australia’s sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island. Robin Powell wrapped up warm to collect stories from one of the wildest places on earth.

Mágico Mexico

Three of Mexico’s native plants are behind three of Linda’s favourite things - chocolate, vanilla and tequila - so she was always going to love the place, but how much surprised even her.