Sarah Raven is one of the leading lifestyle brands in the UK – you must know what’s hot and what’s not. 

I think individuality is what people are looking for, so whenever we launch a new dahlia that we have bred, that will be the one to lead the sales that year. Newness is key, especially to someone who is not following other companies but leading.

So what’s the big seller now?

Our dahlia ‘Molly Raven’ (above), named after our youngest daughter, has been the big seller in 2023 – we bred it five or six years ago. I imagine that next year it will be the one we’ve bred and named after my husband, a copper, ginger nut brown dahlia called ‘Adam’s Choice’. 

What about colours?

We’re moving on from a 1970s vintage palette in the last 5 years. Things are a bit jollier. Think sweet packet inspiration, Love Heart and Jelly Tot boiled sweet colours, but chalky. Mint green, soft blue, primrose yellow, and all together, which is quite unconservative. We’re moving on from the faded muted tones of the dahlia Cafe au Lait, which is beautiful, but a very conservative Cotswold stone look. This is a bit of a reaction against that and it’s braver. 

This all harks back to your Chelsea Flower Show garden in 1996, no?

Yes. It was marked down by the judges at the time as vulgar!

But you were ahead of your time.

Ha! That’s fine by two or three years, less so by 20 years.

Do you often restyle your garden or have you stuck with the same look?

We’re constantly changing. I have a wonderful head gardener, Josie Lewis, who’s been with me 14 or 15 years. She loves change even more than I do and is pushing me the whole time to experiment and try something new. I might be more sentimental but she is more brutal, so we change a lot in the gardens with colour schemes and planting combinations. My husband too [the writer Adam Nicolson] is brilliant at that. He has a great eye. 

So you live in the garden really?

I love outdoor life but I do find winter difficult, so we go to the south of Spain for January and February. It’s hard to live outside all winter, especially on our heavy clay. This year has been particularly difficult – the most difficult garden year because it was so wet. We had tulip blight, which is stressful when you have a garden open to the public, then we were absolutely parched in June. And now we’ve not been able to cut hay this summer as we’ve not had five consecutive days of dry.

Do you get your inspiration from your travels?

Absolutely. I go to Greece in the spring for wildflower inspiration. Really February, March and April are great times for wild flowers in the Med. When it comes to food inspiration it is Spain and Greece – I particularly love the simplicity of Greek food. They still have the absolute culture of growing their own and that very much comes into my Garden Cookbook. 

This was your first cookbook?

Yes. The first cookbook that I wrote and now we’re re-releasing it nearly 20 years on. So many people were requesting it from my publisher Bloomsbury and it was out of print, so we’ve decided to re-release it. It is a massive book with 450 recipes.

So it has sentimental value?

We used to rent a house every Easter in the foothills of the Dolomites when I was one to 15 or 16 years old. A cook came with the house and taught me and my siblings to cook and much of it became our family repertoire – and a lot of that features in the book.

What about eating out in the UK?

There’s a newish café/restaurant near us called Water Lane in a Victorian walled garden and I sometimes will meet a friend there for lunch. We had a day out to see one of my daughters in London recently and did the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, lunch, shopping and met with my daughter for dinner. It was divine. I long to be in London a bit more but it’s just not that phase of my life. 

How do you unwind closer to Perch Hill?

I’m a wild flower fanatic so I go to meadows in May, June, July and we’re lucky to have one just off our lane. I have to read a lot for my podcast so that might be a chef, cookery writer, etc so I’ll read there. In colder seasons, I love woods and birds. My husband has a bird hide so I’ll take a book there, light the woodburner and put on the kettle and watch the birds. 

Is that the retirement plan?

As I get older I want to do more plant breeding. I’ll go to Holland in a few weeks and will be looking at cut flowers for a few years ahead, with a big focus on pollinators. I’m also very proud of the handbooks I’m writing – the latest is A Year Full of Pots but I’ve also done Flowers and Veg, and then I’ll do Vases. 

So no slowing down anytime soon! Finally, is there anything I can still plant for cut flowers? 

Hardy annuals will survive when it gets cold and wet, so try snapdragons (antirrhinums) for late sowing. They may not work if we have a November cold snap like we did last year, but they can flower until Christmas. Cerinthe, Calendula Indian Prince are others and Salvia Viridus Blue (above). Those will all work if sown end of August, maybe even the first two weeks of September if they’re in a sheltered spot.

Inspired?

Check out Sarah’s books, seeds, plants, homewares and more at sarahraven.com including the repackaged edition of Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook, published by Bloomsbury, and available now priced £31.50.