Sarah Raven: An Interview with U.K.’s Popular Gardener, Author, and Entrepreneur

If you’re a regular Gardenista reader, you’re likely already familiar with Sarah Raven. But if you’re not, here’s the easiest way to describe her: She’s the Martha Stewart of the U.K. A tireless gardener, writer, cook, TV personality, entrepreneur, and general arbiter of good taste, Sarah has spent a lifetime crafting beauty and meaning in the domestic realm. She hosts workshops at her floriferous farm Perch Hill in East Sussex, England. She’s written stacks of gardening books and harvest-focused cookbooks, the latest being an updated version of Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (with a new cover and introduction). She runs a respected mail-order plant nursery. And she hosts the podcast Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange with colleague Arthur Parkinson.

Despite all her commitments, Sarah found time to answer our Quick Takes questions. Read on for her expert gardening recommendations—including her genius tip for using lemonade to keep cut flowers fresh!

Photography courtesy of Sarah Raven, unless otherwise noted.

Your first garden memory:

It was picking flowers for my father who was recovering from an operation—a small sherry glass of crocus and iris in February. It’s still one of my favorite ways of having flowers in the house. They’re mini simple jewels.

Garden-related book you return to time and time again:

Keble Martin’s The Concise British Flora in Colour. I used it from when I was a child and it’s fantastic and nostalgic for me.

Instagram account that inspires you:

Giardino_di_hera’s account shows their wonderful garden in southern Italy. It’s just like the garden I dream of and hope to make on a plot of land we’ve just bought in Crete.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic:

Colorful. Jam-packed. Nature-filled.

Plant that makes you swoon:

There are three: Trachelospermum jasminoides, honeysuckles (many), and Sarcococca.

Plant that makes you run the other way:

They are also a few! Variegated, over-fussy leaves, hugely heavy double begonias with flowers so huge they hang their heads with the weight of petals and double bedding pelargoniums with no nectar or pollen for pollinators.

Favorite go-to plant:

Always the dahlia—no doubt.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Dead-heading and staking are both essential—no garden can survive looking good until the autumn without quite a bit of both.

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

Stumperies—they feel too contrived to me!

Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:

You should put flat lemonade in your cut flower water. This has citric acid and carbonic acid (CO2 in liquid forms weak acid). By changing pH you decrease bacterial reproduction and enable the flowers to last longer.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

Color is everything, not architectural and structural plants.

Every garden needs a:

Source of water, even if it’s a shallow plate/tray with stones in. The birds and pollinators need tons of water on a hot day. The plate/tray also needs a lip so the insects don’t drown. Keep it full and keep it clean.

Favorite hardscaping material:

Soft, reclaimed red-bricks.

Tool you can’t live without:

Hori-hori knife. It’s brilliant for weeding, even better for planting, and great for teasing open the structure of the soil

Go-to gardening outfit:

A dress always!

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in:

To have cut flowers around the house and use cut-and-come-again easy salads and herbs like Salad Rocket and Flat-leaved parsley in recipes.

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

Mine!

On your wish list:

Lovely huge citrus trees as much for their winter blossom (and its magnificent, seductive fragrance) as their fruit.

Not-to-be missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

Sissinghurst white garden in the UK. It’s best in mid-June, ideally at the start or end of the day.

The REAL reason you garden:

Keeps me happy, content, engaged, calm, centered. I’d be a much lesser person without gardening and nature and walking out into it for an hour or two every morning at 5am in summer.

Thanks so much, Sarah! (Follow her on Instagram @sarahravenperchhill.)

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