The Beth Chatto Gardens began in 1960. From an overgrown wasteland with poor gravel soil and boggy hollows it has been transformed into an informal garden harmonising with the surrounding countryside. Beth’s special expertise is in her familiarity with plants’ suitability to varying soils and conditions, her own garden being a transformation of several acres of swampland from her husband’s fruit farm. Here she has divided the garden in its natural variations to suit widely differing plants from a water-garden to a dry gravely Mediterranean-type garden. She adheres to her one strict rule of planting – ‘Pick the plants that naturally thrive in the conditions you have in your garden’.