Secret Gardens of Essex

National Gardening Week celebrates the feelgood power of plants and gardens. It’s fair to say that in the last year many of us have found this to be true, whether you’re lucky enough to have your own garden or you head to the nearest open space.

From miles of meandering coastland to inland rural idylls, East Anglia offers a natural and unmanicured beauty. Highlighting often-overlooked Essex as well as the rest of the region, Secret Gardens of East Anglia is a collection of 22 gardens combining large better-known estates with smaller, privately owned. It’s not a new book but it’s a rewarding read right now with soothing and enticing photography. Introduced by Beth Chatto, the late founder of the well-known ecological gardens just outside Colchester in Essex, the remainder of the book is down to author and photographer team Barbara Segall and Marcus Harpur. 

Learn about the area's strong tradition of horticulture and take inspiration for your own patch. What I love about this book is that it isn't all grand topiary, with simple colourful borders and even recycled pylons featuring at Barnard's Farm in West Horndon, Essex, pictured above. Ulting Wick, near Maldon, is home to thousands of tulips in box-edged beds with a new wild flower meadow and pink and white themed gardens as the garden moves away from the core of three listed black Essex barns and a17th-century farmhouse. At Wickham Place Farm, near Witham, pictured below, there's a walled garden dating from 1706, a folly, pond and woodland with a 250ft wisteria growing along the length of one of the walls.

Across the region, admire, Columbine Hall near Stowmarket, with its romantic walled garden with a moat and colourful Mediterranean garden or wine-producing Wyken Hall near Bury St Edmunds. Garden opening information is detailed at the back of the book.