Sarah Raven

Sarah Raven has been running gardening, cooking and flower-arranging courses from Perch Hill — her ninety-acre East Sussex farm — for over thirty years. Medically trained, with a scientific approach to growing, she has presented BBC's Gardeners' World, won Cookery Book of the Year for Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, and writes regularly for House & Garden, Country Living and Gardens Illustrated.

Acclaimed English gardener, cook and writer. Host of the UK’s No.1 gardening podcast.

Course

Magnificent Pots

Discover how to fill your outdoor space with magnificent pots, packed with colour, scent and beauty. Learn from Sarah’s 30 years of experience as she takes you through the entire process, from designing your pot recipes and sowing seeds to planting your pots and caring for them through the seasons. Drawing on her vast knowledge, Sarah reveals her favourite varieties and combinations, enabling you to produce impressive and joy-filled creations, whatever your gardening ability. From low-maintenance perennial pots and drought-resistant table centres to shade-loving flowers and show-stopping whopper pots, there’s something to suit any space and condition. Whether you have a courtyard, balcony or simply a doorstep to fill, Join Sarah as she teaches you how to pack it with flower-filled pots.

25 Lessons

Included with membership

Lesson plan — 25 lessons

01 Introduction & Design

01 An introduction to magnificent pots
02 Designing your pots
03 Creating a sowing and planting schedule

02 Propagation

04 Sowing seeds for pots
05 Potting up dahlias
06 Pricking out your seedlings
07 How to propagate from cuttings

03 Spring Pot Combinations

08 Whopper pots in spring bloom - soft and warm palette
09 Whopper pots in spring bloom - dark and rich palette
10 Whopper pots in spring bloom - boiled sweet palette
11 Whopper pots in spring bloom - soft and cool palette

04 Planting Summer Pots

12 Planting drought resistant pots for table centres
13 Planting a whopper pot for summer
14 Planting a summer pot for a shady garden

05 Summer Pot Recipes

15 The whopper pot in July
16 The shade pot in July
17 The Dutch yard in July
18 The drought tolerant table centres in July
19 Other favourite pot recipes

06 Late Summer Pots in Bloom

20 A whopper pot recipe with dahlias, amaranth, and cardiospermum
21 Perennial pots with salvias
22 Perennial pots with Achillea
23 Dark and rich pot recipes
24 September pots in the Dutch yard
25 Final words

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Course

Cut and Come Again Masterclass

Discover how to maximise the productivity of your plot with acclaimed gardener and grower, Sarah Raven. In this course you will learn that you don’t need to have a huge space to have a hugely productive garden and how, with clever plant selection and thoughtful planning, you can grow an abundance of blooms, year round. In over ten hours of lessons filmed at her famed garden, Perch Hill, Sarah will show you step-by-step how to create the perfect ‘cut and come again’ cutting patch from start to finish, covering everything from how to assess your site and choose your colour palette to how to choose plants to balance flowers and foliage and how to plan your ‘spring’ and ‘summer’ schemes. From her extensive research and trialling, Sarah will share her favourite annuals, biennials, and the perennials proven to come back year after year, and will provide expert guidance on the key gardening tasks across the seasons, offering technical tips and tricks for encouraging healthy plant development and bountiful growth.

48 Lessons

Included with membership

Lesson plan — 48 lessons

01 Introduction

01 Meet Sarah
02 About this course
03 How to grow flowers in abundance
04 The magic of cut-and-come-again flowers

02 Designing and planning

05 Working with colour - Sarah’s four palettes
06 Working with colour - Creating flower combinations
07 Designing your cut flower bed: Choosing the right soil and aspect for your patch
08 Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season one
09 Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season two
10 Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season three
11 Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season four
12 Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season five
13 Creating a sowing calendar

03 Sowing

14 Sarah’s favourite ways to sow seeds
15 Sowing sweet peas
16 Sowing Cobaea scandens
17 Pricking out and pinching out

04 Early spring

18 An early spring arrangement with narcissi, wallflowers and hellebores
19 Preparing the soil in the cutting patch
20 Building a teepee for sweet peas
21 Planting out sweet pea seedlings
22 Planting out hardy annuals
23 Tulip blight
24 Arranging with tulips and narcissi using a grid

05 Late spring

25 Picking tulips for an arrangement
26 A tulip arrangement with spring blossom and butterfly ranunculus

06 Early summer

27 Planting out dahlias
28 Planting gladioli bulbs
29 Planting out half-hardy annuals
30 Planting out Cobaea scandens
31 Supporting the growth of scabious and Ammi majus with jute netting
32 Staking Ammi visnaga with a clove hitch
33 Supporting a dahlia with a hazel nest

07 Midsummer

34 The cutting patch in June
35 A guide to picking your flowers
36 Supporting growth with chestnut gates
37 Picking, deadheading and tying in sweet peas
38 The importance of pinching out
39 Why mulch?
40 How to make your patch successional
41 Picking and arranging with Ammi majus
42 An arrangement with sweet peas, cerinthe, Salvia Viridis 'Blue Monday'
43 The cutting patch in July

08 Late summer

44 The cutting patch in September
45 Picking and arranging Cobaea scandens
46 Picking and supporting dahlias
47 Arranging dahlias in a grid with amaranth, dill and panicum sparking fountain
48 The end of the growing season

Start learning Watch a free lesson

“Sarah Raven's courses for the Cut and Come again flowers and Magnificent Pots are just brilliant. I've learned so much and the workbooks included are very organised and so informative.”

Katrien

“I have subscribed to access all the courses so have watched one on interior design and this one with Butter Wakefield who specialises in small garden design. She has a lovely personality and comes across as being a ve...”

Louise Brown Apr 10, 2026

“I love CreateAcademy. I came in for the gardening and floristry courses, but am also watching an interior design one at present. And the photography course is an absolute must, best I've ever done.”

Wellesley Apr 1, 2026

“What a great investment, I have learned such a lot from the first three courses. My evenings have gone from not being able to find anything that captured my imagination on TV to learning and expanding my knowledge on ...”

sojojo Mar 30, 2026

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