Skip to main content

Exteriors

Variety Show

Rare cultivars of Tuscan and Umbrian fruit – from briaca pears to fiorentina apples – put on a vibrant display at this ancient monastery orchard in the High Tiber Valley. Isabella dalla Ragione has spent over 40 years searching convents, family estates and abandoned farms for forgotten species of tree, bringing many back from the brink of extinction. First published: August 2014

LATEST STORIES

Tulipmania comes to Spitalfields

Polly Nicholson’s blooms and Simon Pettet’s delftware prove a match made in heaven. Or rather east London and Wiltshire…

Karen Blixen’s legacy lives on through the flowers in her Copenhagen garden

Famed for her richly descriptive writing, the aristocratic Danish novelist Karen Blixen was also a passionate gardener who brought the same evocative sensibility to her beguiling bouquets

Villa Santa Lucia’s rock gardens in Marseille humorously blend botany, geology and romance

In the Roucas Blanc suburb of Marseille, a forgotten craft form born of the Rococo blends Portland cement with rural exoticism. The site in question, now run by the next generation of a family that’s overseen it for 40 years, has just been officially labelled a jardin remarquable by the French ministry of culture

Stalk show: the deceptive depth behind the Gorgeous Nothings exhibition at Chatsworth

Do not be fooled into thinking Chatsworth’s new exhibition on flowers is full of fairy-tale whimsy – even the most beautiful blooms can have a dark heart
Get inspired by The World of Interiors SUBSCRIBE NOW

The Full Brazilian: Casa Cavanelas is a dramatic piece of Latin Modernism

Just north of Rio, two greats of their field – architect Oscar Niemeyer and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx – went all out in a triumph of Latin Modernism

Ulla Johnson and Julie Hamisky put petal to the metal with their electroplated floral creations

Fashion designer Ulla Johnson went full speed ahead in collaborating with artist Julie Hamisky, whose technique for freezing flowers in time instantly captivated her

Florence’s botanical museum sows the seeds of horticultural history

Created at the end of the 19th century, the botanical museum in Florence is one of the city’s lesser-known treasures, housing over five million dried plants from round the globe, wax replicas of fruit, flowers and fungi as well as a thriving research community

Jacarandas in Jo’burg: artist William Kentridge’s joyously variegated garden

‘I have a much better garden than I deserve,’ says South African artist and theatre director William Kentridge about the sprawling lawns, flowerbeds, rockeries and fountains that provide him with fertile inspiration

The Garden Museum archives reveal a bounty of nostalgic treasures

Founded in 1977, the Garden Museum in Lambeth is home to an assortment of horticultural ephemera. From a 1930s crazy-paving postcard to cigarette cards illustrating how to lay a lawn, these advertisements take us through gardening’s colourful history

Within Petworth House’s Walled Garden there’s ‘room for your spirits to soar’

At Petworth House in West Sussex, garden and ancestral home are not strictly demarcated. Instead, the dividing lines blur beautifully

Seeds of change: how horticulture is going back to its roots on one Caribbean island

In Barbados, the tropical oasis that is Andromeda Botanic Gardens reintroduces plants that better reflect the history of the island’s enslaved people

The reimagined fantasy-fuelled Malibu estate of Tony Duquette

The late set designer Tony Duquette lost his fantasy Malibu estate in a fire. But now, reports Tim Street-Porter, a neighbour has been maximising what the great maximalist made for him

Pastoral Passions: garden-makers take inspiration from the untamed landscapes around us

How can we harness nature in our own gardens, building back habitats and bringing back biodiversity in the process? A new book shows us how, with 20 inspiring projects

Tallulah and Amanda Harlech traverse the grounds of Glyn Cywarch

The rugged Jacobean exterior of Glyn Cywarch conceals a minmalist interior newly transformed by the latest generations of redoubtable Harlech women