The walled garden we designed at Borde Hill is open. Restaurant Isca is now welcoming guests into the glasshouse, surrounded by our biodynamic, edimental planting: every plant edible, every plant ornamental. Four years in the making.

Post-Chelsea triage: box moth, roses taking over the fence, dahlias left outside all winter that came back. Why I tie climbing roses horizontally, and the biological control that saved the Buxus. ALL in this week’s My Real Gardens Substack newsletter: https://loom.ly/S4ss4sE Free section for all.

RHS Chelsea 2026. The press called it more of the same rewilding story. On the evidence of Main Avenue, they're wrong. My full review: https://open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens/p/rhs-chelsea-flower-show-2026-my-very-3e7?r=9b2c7&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Back from six days at Chelsea — straight to a client’s Esher garden for the first growing-season review since planting in November. Allium ‘Purple Rain’ + Digitalis ‘Goldcrest’ doing exactly what they promised. One of seven areas. More to follow. #GardenDesign #AlliumSeason

Behind the house, Jackie's garden does something quieter. Camassia leichtlinii 'Alba' drifting through Anemanthele lessoniana, dark Aquilegia for pips of colour, stepping stones under a silver birch. Gardens that look like they've simply happened are the hardest to design.

RHS Chelsea 2026: a show in transition. New headline sponsor. Project Giving Back in its final year. AI-designed gardens for the first time. My honest preview is over on the My Real Gardens Substack, link below. https://loom.ly/fqBLm70

Topiary holding the bones, Calycanthus in flower, the view across to the South Downs. One of the joys of social media is watching the gardens we've designed grow on, through the clients generous enough to share them.

What's your definition of happiness? Mine? A garden, planted. Central London garden. Difficult access, levels, existing York stone lifted, recut & hand-knapped.Today the plants finally went in. A newly built garden goes from green, to brown then green again. This moment the garden returns at last.

Meet Lisa Silvestro. Junior Garden Designer at AMPG. Fine Art in Marseille, a degree in Film, years as a videographer and colourist before the pull of plants won. Now she's bringing an artist's eye and a designer's discipline to the studio. We're lucky to have her.

Walking our Kent site with Mary and Ian Calder of Landform. Plans out, levels checked, details talked through before they become potential challenges. The hundred small decisions that look unimportant on paper and matter hugely on the ground. This one's a biggie! Hugely excited to share progress.

Fifteen years to breed a tulip. Fourteen years in, it can still get pulled if it doesn't make the grade. That stayed with our Landscape Architect Penny Walker after a specialist bulb day at @rhswisley with JUB Holland last week. 100,000 bulbs in the formal gardens. The scale alone is worth the trip.

The Studio Jar. A weekly look at what the AMPG team is trialling in Ann-Marie's garden before it goes on a client's planting plan. This week: bulbs, and why we specify them in layers across the planting year. Read the full studio notes on our website. https://www.ann-mariepowell.com/the-studio-jar/

Bare earth. Hi-vis. Scaffolding. Every garden starts here. The Cottonmill Spa Garden at Sopwell House, six years on. Still working for guests. Still earning its keep in press features, top ten lists and award pages. https://loom.ly/3myhZCo

Garden designers can't drive past a garden gate. This weekend: Forde Abbey in Dorset. 900 years, 30 acres, still evolving. Green-winged orchids in the meadow (stewardship worth applauding), jawdroppingly prehistoric bog garden planting, a magenta and scarlet tulip combo I adored. fordeabbey.co.uk

The Octavia Hill Lecture at The Royal Society last night. Baroness Kathy Willis on the healing power of nature, backed by extraordinary science. When we designed the Octavia Hill Garden at Chelsea 2024, we asked: what would Octavia do? Still asking. Nature is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.

Proud to be recognised in the 2026 @SpearsMagazine Gardeners & Landscape Designers Index, ranked Top Recommended for a second consecutive year. Bold. Vibrant. Biodiverse. Always.

This week’s plant ident from my garden. Amelanchier, hellebores, erythronium, fritillary, Tulipa ‘Continental’, epimedium, and two narcissus: ‘Bella Estrella’ and ‘Hunter Dawn’, which might be the most fragrant thing in the garden right now. Couldn’t pick any tulips yet, they're too spectacular!

Pushchairs round the fountain, every bench taken. The World Food Garden at RHS Wisley, just as April begins. We designed this alongside the Wildlife Garden at Hilltop. The edibles team have made it brilliantly their own. www.ann-mariepowell.com

We designed the Wildlife Garden at RHS Wisley 5 years ago. It's one of those projects you keep going back to. Not to check on it. Just to see what it's become. If you're visiting Wisley this spring, don't miss it. ann-mariepowell.com

Sicily then Cornwall. In one week. Wild orchids, a limestone gorge, Roman mosaics, then The Edge from U2 talking about soil at the Eden Project. I was not prepared. Read the full story below: This week's newsletter: https://myrealgardens.substack.com/p/wild-orchids-roman-mosaics-greater

COLOUR. As featured in today's Times. Ann Treneman and I talked why growing what you love is always the answer. My new book A Year of Colour is at the heart of it all. 40 planting combinations, every season, from my own garden. Photographed by the FAB Julie Skelton. https://geni.us/Ayearofcolour

What makes a garden whimsical? Thrilled to be part of this brilliant piece by Helen Cross for Homes & Gardens in the States. No paywall either. https://www.homesandgardens.com/gardens/whimsical-garden-ideas#section-4-make-color-bold-and-rebellious

New newsletter. My top ten perennials for summer colour. It nearly broke me but it's done! Read it at https://open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens/p/a-summer-of-colour-part-3-my-top?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web 💜🧡

Some pieces are harder to write than others. This one's called 'Blurred Edges' and it's about my garden, this winter, and what happens when you stop trying to control things. Available to read or listen to on The Garden Collective — free to join, £1 first month. https://loom.ly/8zXE_IU

Sopwell House named one of the 25 best honeymoon hotels in the world by Glamour. The only UK hotel on the list. We designed the Mews, landscape & gardens for The Club at Cottonmill Spa. A very proud moment. Congrats to the whole Sopwell House team. glamourmagazine.co.uk/gallery/best-honeymoon-hotels

Multiple suppliers. Multiple baskets. Banking app face down. Part 2 of A Summer of Colour is live — the summer bulb order. Not dahlias. The OTHER ones. The varieties nobody mentions and where to actually buy them. All over on the My Real Gardens Substack: https://loom.ly/fsuEVSw

Twelve months. Every single one considered throughout the year. This South Downs cottage garden — from frozen topiary in January to rudbeckia borders in August to asters in October. Same garden. Twelve different reasons to be outside. Get more inspiration here: geni.us/Ayearofcolour

Those circles? Vectorworks software. Data-rich: size, botanical name, pollinator value. We've built custom libraries from decades of experience. Software can't KNOW plants. That takes years. Bold, vibrant, biodiverse really do take meticulous planning. www.ann-mariepowell.com

Thrilled to be part of the 'Creative Work' feature in this month's Homes & Gardens with our Octavia Hill inspired RHS Chelsea Garden as the full-page lead image. Twice in one week this garden resurfaces - it's perhaps my favourite we've ever built at Chelsea. Beyond heartening it still resonates.

Pantone's 2026 colour is an off-white called Cloud Dancer. We respectfully disagree. Our counter-proposal: literally any of these. Bold. Vibrant. Biodiverse. Always. Frankly, we think 2026 is the Year of Colour (no surprise!) - if you were Pantone's CEO, which colour would you choose for 2026?

Lost Chelsea files - Julie Skelton found these from our 2024 RHS garden. Bold, vibrant, biodiverse planting. The Garden won Children's Choice, People's Choice & Silver-Gilt. Perfect timing as A YEAR OF COLOUR launches. https://geni.us/Ayearofcolour 📷 Julie Skelton

No hearts and flowers here! Well, not the cellophane-wrapped kind anyway. https://open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens/p/this-is-not-a-valentine?r=9b2c7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

We could have talked for hours! Sat down with Liz Smith to talk A Year of Colour for Community Life Magazines' March edition – Cobham & Esher, Weybridge & Brooklands, and Runnymede Life. To have them interview me about my work AND celebrate the book is a privilege. https://geni.us/Ayearofcolour

What a night at the SGLD Awards on Friday with Mary, Penny and Lisa from the AMPG team. Such a privilege to be part of an industry that champions each other so wholeheartedly. Congratulations to all the winners and shortlisted entries. And yes — Saturday morning heads were decidedly fragile!

The mud on our Kent project? World class. Five years of planning, currently expressed as fog, clay and one very impressive drainage run. Feels wonderful to have Landform on site building a rather special landscape for us. We cannot wait to share the progress — it's going to be AMAZING!

Today's the day! A Year of Colour is out in the world. Read or listen to the whole story behind the book here: https://www.scribehound.com/gardening/plants/s/plants/a-year-of-colour-your-permission-to-garden-boldly?ref=share&sharer=egDFZeseKmeETBRn7&shareType=QizkKDME&channel=gardening

You don't need a bulldozer to fall back in love with your garden. Sometimes it's the planting that needs attention, not the whole garden. Bespoke planting plans, designed remotely, delivered worldwide. https://www.ann-mariepowell.com/small-project-services/ (scroll down for Planting Plans)

First review in! The English Garden has featured A Year of Colour in their March issue and I'm genuinely touched. Forty planting combinations. Eighteen months of photography. One week until launch! Seeing it welcomed like this means more than I can properly express.

If January is dragging, seek out a garden. Even a quiet one - in fact, especially a quiet one. Here's our RHS Wisley Wildlife Garden – still but far from dormant. Fungi at work below, insects in hollow stems, birds in the seedheads. Let them do their thing whilst you do yours.

Grey January. Brown borders. Enough! Year-round colour isn't luck – it's planting design. Thirty years of testing in my own garden, now in a book. 'A Year of Colour' – out 5th Feb. https://www.ann-mariepowell.com/a-year-of-colour/

Where do we find them? The ones we've loved and lost. I've written something for The Garden Collective about Jules, about gardens, and about learning where I find him now. My garden is helping. I just wish he was still in it with me. £1 for your first month 👇 https://loom.ly/LAwpqJ0

£3,800 raised at the @PerennialGRBS Pie & Pint Quiz. 96 people supporting Perennial to support anyone who works in horticulture – the growers, landscapers, gardeners. The people who make it all happen. AMPG is a very proud Gold Partner. Are you? https://loom.ly/J3dI2b4

The deluges are making me lose the plot. Borders are soup. Bulbs held hostage. But I've got a backup plan. This week: unhinged planting solutions, West End wigs, free audiobooks, & news about A Year of Colour. If you fancy a read, here's the link: https://myrealgardens.substack.com/p/rain-stop-now

The countdown is ON. A Year of Colour lands 6th Feb (UK) and late March (US/Canada). My fifth book – forty real planting combos from my garden, captured over 18 months. This one means the world to me. Pre-order: https://geni.us/Ayearofcolour (UK) | https://geni.us/Ayearofcolor (US)

We're up for an award! Maybush, our colourful courtyard near Chichester is shortlisted for the @the_sgld Awards 2026. Ceremony on 6th Feb. Fingers crossed, but just being shortlisted feels like a win to us! More images and info on our website: https://www.ann-mariepowell.com/contemporary-courtyard/

Twelve months. Twelve reasons to be outside. That's the goal. No dull February. No waiting for June. Every scheme we design considers colour, texture and life through all twelve months. Here's to a year of gardens that truly work. We'd love to help with your project.

You don't need a country estate to work with an award-winning garden designer. Use our small projects services: Consultations. Planting plans available worldwide. Small garden design packages. 30 years of expertise, accessible to all. Full details: ann-mariepowell.com/small-project-services

We're back at the AMPG studio & 2026 greeted us with a snow-dusted landscape. The drive through Hampshire & West Sussex was a treat this morning – even our car park looked beautiful! We're refreshed and ready for an exciting year of bold, vibrant, biodiverse garden design. www.ann-mariepowell.com

Your vote would mean everything 💚 Our Maybush project is up for the SGLD People's Choice Award 2026—a climate-forward sanctuary & thriving ecosystem with bold colour, year-round biodiversity. Vote by 31 Oct: https://sgld.org.uk/events/awards/peoples-choice/2026/vote/ Ann-Marie & AMPG studio x

Getty Center's hardscaping: a 30-inch modular grid creates rhythm across the plazas. Rough-split travertine walls meet smooth paving, textured surfaces catch shadow. Massive boulders vary water sounds. 30 years on the contrasts still amaze! 1/3 #GettyCenter #LandscapeArchitecture