ann-marie powell gardens

19/06/2026

Beautiful. Private. Rarely seen.

Clare Foggett, editor of The English Garden, has written a book. And it's a good one.

Beauty & Abundance: British Cottage Gardens, photography by Jonathan Buckley. Out now from Quadrille.

The question she set herself was: what actually defines a cottage garden? The answer, she found, was mostly hidden behind closed gates. This book opens them. Private gardens, rarely photographed, alongside better-known ones. All with interviews with the owners and designers.

One of those gardens is Jackie Sherling's Shepherd Cottage. An AMPG project. A whole chapter. We're proud to be in it.

Link on more, including where to buy below.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/476082/beauty-and-abundance-by-buckley-clare-foggett-and-jonathan/9781837836413

18/06/2026

A walled kitchen garden cultivated since 1906. This is what it looks like now.

Four years of design work, planting plans, and collaboration with Jay Goddard and the team at Borde Hill Garden's Estate.

The aerial shots from photographer Julie Skelton: photography show the full layout clearly for the first time since it was completed: the four elemental quadrants, the curved edimental beds, the aperitif garden, the reflecting pool, and the glasshouse restaurant behind.

Jack Hazell and Philip McEnaney at Isca Restaurant have been cooking from this garden since it opened, with menus that change at every solstice and equinox.

We've been waiting for these images. Worth it.

Photography: Julie Skelton

10/06/2026

A conversation I've been looking forward to, organised by David Harber Sculptures, about climate-resilient land and what gardeners can take from the way farmers think.

In the room: Isabella Tree of Knepp and Wilding, Ian Wilkinson of FarmED and Cotswold Seeds, seventh-generation California farmer Thomas Lloyd-Butler, with Andy Sturgeon moderating.

The regenerative argument is that diversity and undisturbed ground build fertility from below. Farmers feed the soil, not the plant. They keep living roots in the ground all year and let the biology do the heavy lifting. As designers we tend to improve the soil once and move on. That's what I'm going in to learn more about.

Thank you to David Harber for bringing this together.

What would you ask the panel if you could? Let me know and I'll ask them for you.

09/06/2026

A garden is the people in it. Always. And last week, the walled kitchen garden we redesigned at Borde Hill was full of them.

I was at for the launch of Restaurant Isca and the walled garden we redesigned, for their new glasshouse restaurant, and I confess I was slightly distracted by the people!

Swipe to meet them.

First, Jay Goddard, fifth-generation custodian of Borde Hill, Managing Director, and the first woman in the role. Jay is the force behind Isca, with her wonderfully effervescent mother Eleni Stephenson-Clarke, who with husband Andrewjohn earned the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal for what this family has given to horticulture. Five generations of plant people. There must be something in the soil.

Then, Julia Burton, Senior Kitchen Gardener at Borde Hill, who tends the scheme day to day and knows every bed better than I do. The garden is hers now, and it's in brilliant hands. Julia is LITERALLY growing the menu. Every plant in that walled garden will, at some point, end up on your plate.

Then there's Jim Gardiner. 28 years at the RHS. 30 years on the Borde Hill Garden Council. Holds the Victoria Medal of Honour. Wrote the definitive book on magnolias. There is a grove at Borde Hill of 50 magnolias named after him, Gardiner Grove, planted in 2018. One of the warmest, most generous people in this industry, and last week in a garden that is, without question, the UK's magnolia capital. (20 champion trees. TWENTY.) Even restaurant Isca is named after a rare magnolia growing right here, Magnolia x veitchii 'Isca'.

Then two faces from down the road: Jodie Hilton, Head Gardener at the National Trust's Sheffield Park, with a friend (forgive me, I didn't catch your name, do say hello in the comments if you see this1). The horticultural south of England is a small and generous world.

The last picture is the kitchen garden doing its actual job, guests wandering the beds while the chard and sweetcorn get on with growing. Which is the whole point.

Plants, people, place, purpose. This one has all four.

· Design: Ann-Marie Powell Gardens

06/06/2026

Do you grow flowers or food? Most gardeners I speak to do both. They just haven't found the word for it yet.

Edimental. Edible and ornamental, from the same plant, in the same border. It's an idea I've been designing around for twenty years, from a small London back garden in the mid-2000s to a 1906 walled garden in West Sussex where Restaurant Isca opened last week and the kitchen is already cutting plants from our planting scheme for tonight's menu.

This week's My Real Gardens newsletter covers twelve edimental plants from the actual Borde Hill list, where to buy them, and what a Michelin-trained kitchen does with them.

What they add to your garden. How I grew to adore them. And right now, the chefs at Borde Hill are cutting plants from my edimentals scheme for tonight’s menu.

05/06/2026

Every plant in this garden earns its place twice. Once for what it looks like. Once for what it contributes to the plate.

The walled kitchen garden at Borde Hill Estate was first cultivated in 1906. We were asked to reimagine it as a biodynamic edimental garden: four quadrants, each drawn from an element, earth, wind, fire, water. Wild bergamot, Sichuan pepper, liquorice root, cha-cha chives, a pergola of vines. Crimson clover fixing nitrogen into soil worked for over a century.

Nothing here is purely decorative. Nothing is purely productive.
Guests arrive into The Cosmos aperitif garden before stepping into the glasshouse, where the kitchen garden is visible through every course. Jack Hazell and Philip McEnaney cook from the borders daily.

I grabbed my phone the moment the rain stopped. Professional photography is coming, I promise!

Borde Hill Garden Isca Restaurant

04/06/2026

The gate is open having been closed for a very long time.

120 years of walled kitchen garden history behind those sandstone pillars at Borde Hill, West Sussex. And now, for the first time, a sign that says: welcome.

Restaurant Isca at Borde Hill opened this week. AMPG was commissioned to reimagine the 1906 walled kitchen garden as a biodynamic edimental garden: every plant chosen for its beauty and its edibility in equal measure.

Four elemental quadrants. Heritage brick paths. Sandstone walls that have been sheltering plants since before any of us were born.

The glasshouse restaurant sits within the garden, with Executive Chef Jack Hazell and Head Chef Philip McEnaney at the stoves. Their team is cutting plants from our scheme for the plates right now. That's the whole point of edimentals.

We're proud of this one. Let us know if you're planning a visit.

Ann-Marie Powell Gardens | | Restaurant Isca at Borde Hill

03/06/2026

And so the colour begins.
This is a front garden in its first season, planted a smidge late, so the alliums are leading the charge right now. Deep purple globes against fresh green, trees leafing up, and perennial planting that's days away from bursting into life.
What you're seeing is perhaps a quarter of what this space will eventually become.
First-season gardens don't look finished. They look like this: full of potential, with everything finding its feet.
We can't wait to show you what happens next.
Designed by Ann-Marie Powell Gardens

02/06/2026

Four years in the making. The walled garden we designed at Borde Hill to surround Restaurant Isca is OPEN, and I'm beyond excited to join the team this evening for the launch celebration.

Named after a rare magnolia in the garden, Magnolia x veitchii 'Isca', the restaurant sits just 40 minutes from central London and is built around a planting philosophy that is biodynamic and entirely 'edimental', meaning every plant is chosen for its edibility as much as its beauty.

The design is divided into four quadrants, each inspired by an element: earth, wind, fire and water. From wild bergamot, Sichuan pepper and winter savoury to liquorice root, cha-cha chives and a pergola of vines, every plant finds its way onto the plate.

The design also pays tribute to Borde Hill's history of plant-collecting since the 19th century, which has established one of the most remarkable botanical collections in Sussex.

Guests arrive through the original wrought-iron gates into The Cosmos, an outdoor aperitif garden shaped as a flower petal, before stepping into the glasshouse restaurant. The arches echo those on Borde Hill's Grade II-listed Mansion House from the 1720s, sandstone from the nearby West Hoathly quarry grounds the building in local heritage, and the kitchen garden is visible through the glass throughout the meal.

In the kitchen, Executive Chef Jack Hazell brings a career spanning Marcus at the Berkeley, Claude Bosi at Bibendum, The Gilbert Scott and the St Pancras Renaissance. Head Chef Philip McEnaney comes from Trinity in London and Boath House near Inverness. Together they cook root-to-tip and nose-to-tail, with menus changing at every solstice and equinox, guided by what the estate's two-acre biodynamic Market Garden is producing.

These aerials by Julie Skelton were taken a few weeks before opening. The planting will have grown considerably since then. Swipe to see the full space, and stay for the final slide to see what we were working with at the start.

Photography: Julie Skelton. Restaurant Isca at Borde Hill Estate, Haywards Heath, Sussex.

30/05/2026

I came back from RHS Chelsea to find my own garden had gone completely feral!

Box moth caterpillars in the box balls, climbing roses taking over the fence, sweet peas with no supports. And dahlias I’d left outside in their pots all winter, not lifted, not moved, coming back almost in their entirety.

This week’s My Real Gardens newsletter covers the full triage: biological controls for box moth (and why the concern about non-target caterpillars is largely unfounded when treating Buxus), the case for tying climbing roses horizontally rather than vertically, and the glyphosate-free weedkiller I’ve been using on the drive for years.

Thirty years of experience distilled into one very messy May garden.

Read it here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens/p/my-garden-has-gone-feral?r=9b2c7&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

The box moth situation, the dahlia miracle, and why I ordered the same hammock twice.