Sarah Raven’s Cutting Garden Journal

As we’ve said before can’t get enough of Sarah Raven’s wonderful website which not only sells many of her favorite flowers as seeds, bulbs and plants, but also provides a brilliant source of instructional videos, usually filmed against the backdrop of her picturesque gardens at her farm, Perch Hill in East Sussex. Visiting the gardens – and nearby Sissinghurst where Raven used to live – and hearing the writer, broadcaster and cook talk is on our never-ending to do list. In the meantime though we are lapping up all the sage advice in her latest book, The Cutting Garden Journal which is largely based on the philosophy of her much lauded first book, The Cutting Garden, which was written 20 years ago. The Journal – as the name implies – is arranged around the gardening year and packed with advice on what to plant when, and how, as well as lots of tips on collecting your eventual harvest too. If, like us, you love having vast vases, urns and other receptacles full of glorious flowers, then this book will be incredibly useful. There are garden layouts for small as well as large spaces and sketches of Raven’s own schemes at Perch Hill too. Having a garden full of your own flowers is, as the writer says in her introduction, “the ever-filling cup, that never fails to deliver.”

 

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