BBC presenter Jules Hudson (Countryfile, Escape to the Country) is passionate about walled gardens. In this book, he looks at walled gardens throughout England and Wales and explores their history, innovative design and cultural heritage. The walled garden was once an essential component of every country house, its shelter providing ideal conditions for growing food, flowers and medicine. This book from the National Trust looks at walled gardens throughout England and Wales and explores their history, innovative design and cultural heritage. Walled gardens are a feature of British gardening history. In the late 18th century, gardens became status symbols, with aristocrats vying to grow ever more exotic fruits - ushering in innovations such as glasshouses and even heated walls. With the First and Second World Wars many of these gardens fell into disrepair, but renovated ones feature at many key National Trust properties and remain a source of pride and fascination today.

Inspiration and advice about finding a dream home in the countryside from Jules Hudson, presenter of the BBC's Escape to the Country.

Escape to the Country has run on daytime BBC1 since 2002 and is now in its eighteenth season. Each week it helps urban buyers find their dream home in rural Britain by showing them specially selected properties. Along the way the program tells us about the landscape and history of the area they are in. The program is on every weekday and has been sold to thirty countries including Australia, Canada, and the USA. This is an inspirational and practical book to appeal to armchair dreamers and lovers of property porn as well as those really thinking of making the move.

Regional sections look at the typical kinds of homes found in each place, along with local landscapes and landmarks. Features sprinkled throughout the book cover everything from dealing with listed building consent and public footpaths to how grow your own food. Jules is well placed to talk about conservation and renovation issues too, having trained as an archaeologist and renovated his own historic house.