Secret Gardens of East Anglia: A Private Tour of 22 Gardens

Secret Gardens of East Anglia: A Private Tour of 22 Gardens, Barbara Segall and Marcus Harpur, September 2017
Quarto Homes

The big skies and the extraordinary light of East Anglia make it unlike anywhere else in Britain, and offer the most amazing natural conditions in which to create gardens. The twenty-two gardens selected for Secret Gardens of East Anglia celebrate the culture, beauty and diversity of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, and all deserve to be better known.

Introduced by eminent East Anglian plantswoman Beth Chatto, the gardens appearing on these pages are brought to life by the award-winning author and photographer team of Barbara Segall and Marcus Harpur. From each garden we can learn about the creator’s style, their talent for exploiting the genius loci, and the specific challenges and rewards they have encountered.

Featured gardens include:

• COLUMBINE HALL A moated garden with a series of green rooms
• HELMINGHAM HALL GARDENS A gem of a garden hidden in its own moated island
• KIRTLING TOWER A field of daffodils for a Tudor gatehouse
• RAVENINGHAM HALL Exquisite planting in the RHS president’s private garden
• THE MANOR HOUSE, FENSTANTON Garden rooms on Capability Brown’s private estate
• ULTING WICK Thousands of tulips against a backdrop of black wooden barns
• WINTERTON LIGHTHOUSE A lush yet restrained garden framing a lighthouse
• WYKEN HALL Vines and roses around an Elizabethan manor house

RADIO, PODCASTS, YOUTUBE

CAMBRIDGE 105 RADIO
Barbara Segall talks with Suzie Thorpe about Secret Gardens of East Anglia including, amongst other things, what makes a garden ‘secret’: Listen here.

THE SODSHOW PODCAST WITH PETER DONEGAN
Sitting in Peter’s Dublin kitchen, he and Barbara talk about the 22 secret gardens of East Anglia, their owners and gardeners, the Garden Media Guild and life as a garden writer; and photographer Marcus Harpur, to whom they dedicated this episode of The Sodshow: Listen here.

BBC RADIO SUFFOLK
Barbara Segall was the sofa guest on Lesley Dolphin’s BBC Radio Suffolk show broadcast on 7 September 2017: Listen here.

PETER SEABROOK
Award-winning horticulturist Barbara Segall joins Peter to discuss her book Secret Gardens of East Anglia: Listen here.

MY GARDEN SCHOOL
Barbara Segall talks about Secret Gardens of East Anglia (courtesy of MyGardenSchool). Watch on YouTube

DOWN TO EARTH
BBC Radio Leicester’s gardening show reviews the book on air. Starts at 45:47. Link expires 6 November 2017.

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AUTHOR EVENTS

Find out about book signing events and talks given by Barbara Segall.

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BARBARA SEGALL is a well-known horticulturist and garden writer. Her work appears in a number of popular publications such as The English Garden and the website Richard Jackson’s Garden. She is editor of The Horticulturist, the journal of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and also editor of Herbs magazine for The Herb Society. She lives in Suffolk, one of the prettiest counties in East Anglia, and writes regularly on gardens, gardeners and garden style for magazines and her own blog www.thegardenpost.com Her first book with Frances Lincoln was Gardens By The Sea with photography by Jerry Harpur.

MARCUS HARPUR began his career in book publishing before joining his father, Jerry, to form Harpur Garden Library in 1992. He is a contributing photographer to the RHS Garden Plant Selector and the Colourful Gardening series and principal photographer on titles such as How to Garden, Dream Gardens of England and The English Country House Garden (Frances Lincoln).