The most beautiful rose gardens to visit

A wander through Britain and beyond, from Mottisfont to Ninfa, with tips on roses and design. Plus: two Easter cakes and a bit of tulip mania

And a very happy Easter weekend to you

Before we get going, here’s an enormous welcome to all new subscribers: if you’re new to The Gardening Mind and are wondering what we’re all about here, there’s all sorts: design articles, plant profiles, garden challenges, short courses, tutorials, and lots and lots more.

It really is a community here, created by all the wonderful members over the last four years, and you’ll find lots of friendly conversations going on over in the Chat - do come and join us there on Sundays where we have the regular Show Us Your Plots show and tell. This is the easiest thing in the world, where we post photos of our gardens or a green space that we’ve seen. The photos absolutely don’t have to be beautiful or filtered or award-winningly fantastic. It’s simply the real deal there. I’d love it if you were able to come and join in.

I ❤️ you!

Have I told you just how much I love Substack and this Gardening Mind community? In last week’s article, I took members for a potter along some rather fabulous front gardens in London. Well, it turned out that one of the gardens belongs to the parents of one of our members - how fabulous was that?! It was so brilliant to read the comments, and I now have an invitation to go and knock on the door!

None of this would be possible without you all - you really have made The Gardening Mind what it is: the very best gardening community here on Substack.

It’s Easter and the fact had completely passed me by until last weekend…. I’ve been racing around buying Easter Eggs and deliberating on whether to dress up once more as the Easter Bunny, or whether that now the eldest nephew is 13, he won’t fall for it any more….

Terrible photo quality: the photographer was laughing too much and so it’s all very shaky. But yes, that’s me and poor old Rush

This lack of awareness means I haven’t got round to making the usual Easter tree. It makes me fall about every year as the most marvellous creations start appearing on Instagram, complete with tablescaping, while I chop off a piece of goat willow and stick a few straggly chicks on it.

I realise how much I love those old-fashioned Easter cards which are very clearly NOT AI.

The pinks and yellows and general mutedness are absolutely right for this time of year - they kind of slide us into full blown colour explosions later on. The great thing about tulips is that you can change your schemes round each year, but I find it fascinating to see how I’ve changed my schemes over the years into something softer, more gentle.

From the classic pales to exploring the idea that we could play with bold, due to Sarah Raven’s Bold and Brilliant Garden - her ideas were so new at the time, and she was the inspiration for a braver kind of colour combining.

This was followed by exploring with stripes and then by going full sweetshop. Then the pastels started, and now I’m now back to pastels and parrots, which I find really soothing.

Tulip highlights from my garden 2012-2026

Who knows where the future will take us….

And just out of interest, which of these two below is your favourite?

Tiptoeing through the tulips - the 2026 version

The tulips are looking TREMENDOUS generally, both in the garden and in this bulb meadow I planted at my local pub. Here, there’s a play on colour, going for a mix but with some softness to make sure it doesn’t feel too try-hard. It’s a meadow, after all. Sorry for the quality of my photos - snapped on my phone.

It makes me so happy every time I go - and actually is a very good excuse to go to the pub (oh I simply MUST check on the tulips).

There’s a mix of tulips, narcissi and fritillaria - and to find out how to make a bulb meadow, I wrote about it here.

In my garden, it’s all go:

The sun has peeked out on a few mornings and lulled the garden into thinking that summer’s on its way.

The tulips have definitely been early this year: all that rain did them no harm in the pots; although the perennial tulips still keep coming back in the beds, I’m going to continue to plant them in containers only as it keeps the soil healthier and reduces the risk of disease. Plus, it means I can shuffle the pots around and in and out as they come into flower, bloom, and then fade.

The two virus-y tulips have come back year after year, and this year is no exception. I just love how they stand proudly next to their relations, their intended colours beautiful but not half as fun as the tulip breaking virus stripes:

Tulip breaking virus sounds alarming, but it's actually what gave us those legendary feathered and flamed tulips the Dutch Golden Age painters couldn't get enough of. A mosaic virus¹, spread by aphids, it interrupts the pigment distribution as the petals form: the result is this glorious, unpredictable streaking - Nature's happy accident.

By the way, don’t you just love what tulips do? They start off looking like one thing, and end up looking completely different.

Days 1, 4 and 7 after cutting of the same tulip:

Garden Design Studio news

Due to demand, I have decided to run this course again - if you were at the top of the waiting list, you’ll have received an email from me. If you’re. thinking you’d like to be on the list, do drop me an email with the title STUDIO.

Cohort #1, you’ll have received your instructions for our first session - I can’t wait to get started!

Finally, to the point of today’s post:

Right now, the roses are just getting started

There’s something going on in this photo which has got me rather excited: new rose foliage. Look at those gorgeous shades of plummy, reddy brown. And there’s one thing that new leaves mean - the buds will soon be on their way. And that in turn means: ROSES.

June is when rose gardens reach their peak in the UK, and some of these displays last just a few short weeks:

GAP Photos/Howard Rice - Mottisfont Abbey Rose Garden, Hampshire