The Plant Review
The Plant Review is the Royal Horticultural Society's quarterly magazine of in-depth plant knowledge: 68 pages of authoritative articles on plant profiles, horticulture, botany and the science behind garden plants. Written by acknowledged experts and aimed at everyone who loves plants, it occupies a distinctive space between the Society's popular monthly The Garden and its peer-reviewed scientific journals. First published in 1979 under the name The Plantsman, it was renamed The Plant Review in September 2019, beginning a new chapter for one of Britain's most respected horticultural periodicals.
Origins as The Plantsman
The magazine was launched in 1979 as The Plantsman, at a time when serious amateur gardeners and professional horticulturists had few publications devoted entirely to plants themselves — their identification, cultivation, breeding and botanical background. Where most gardening magazines focused on design, technique and the garden as a whole, The Plantsman put the plant at the centre: genera, species and cultivars examined in depth by people who grew and studied them.
Over four decades the title built a devoted readership among plantspeople — nursery professionals, botanic garden staff, keen amateurs and collectors — and an international reputation for rigour. Its contributors included many of the leading figures in British horticulture, and its pages became a record of changing fashions in ornamental gardening, from the rise of ornamental grasses to the rediscovery of heritage varieties.
The 2019 renaming
From September 2019 the magazine became The Plant Review, a change the RHS presented as a refresh rather than a rupture. The new name reflected the magazine's actual content — a review of the plant world in all its aspects — and was intended to make the title more welcoming to new readers while keeping its authority intact for the existing audience.
The continuity was deliberate: the same quarterly rhythm, the same depth of expertise, the same 68-page colour format. The RHS's own description of the relaunched title — written by people who know and grow plants, balancing news, gardens and profiles of plants readers will long to grow — could have described The Plantsman at its best. The rename simply gave that proposition a clearer label.
The RHS as publisher
The Plant Review is published by the Royal Horticultural Society, the UK's leading gardening charity, whose mission is to help people and plants grow. The Society's publishing stable includes the monthly membership magazine The Garden, with its huge circulation, and a range of specialist journals; The Plant Review is the most plant-focused of its consumer-facing titles.
Being an RHS publication gives the magazine unique advantages: access to the Society's gardens at Wisley, Rosemoor, Hyde Hall, Harlow Carr and Bridgewater, its plant trials, its scientific staff and its unrivalled network of experts. It also means the magazine reflects the scientific work of the RHS and of other horticultural and botanical institutions, keeping readers in touch with research that affects what they grow.
Editorial scope and subject matter
The magazine's subject matter is defined by depth rather than breadth. Typical coverage includes detailed profiles and evaluations of plant genera, species and cultivars of horticultural merit; descriptions of recent plant introductions and new plants; new or advanced cultivation and propagation techniques; and detailed accounts of findings from RHS plant trials, including which varieties earn the Award of Garden Merit.
Beyond the garden gate, the magazine covers developments in plant taxonomy and changes to the names of garden plants — a subject of endless fascination and occasional controversy among gardeners — alongside plant exploration and travel writing, conservation of garden plants and wild plants of horticultural interest, and advances in plant breeding. Profiles of plant experts, breeders and horticultural personalities sit alongside features on botanical illustration and its development, and opinion pieces from prominent horticultural figures.
A tour through recent issues
The back-issue highlights published by the RHS give a vivid picture of the magazine's range. The March 2020 issue reviewed snowdrops with yellow markings with Jim Almond, interviewed the great bulb breeder Janis Ruksans about gardening in the Soviet era, and had Clive Stace explain how DNA analysis has transformed plant classification. The June 2020 issue enthused over new mahonias with Roy Lancaster and examined the curious shrub genus Helwingia with Ross Bayton.
Other recent features have included Keith Hammett on his dahlia breeding programme, Christopher Grey-Wilson on Meconopsis hybrids, a tour of the Morton Arboretum near Chicago as it approached its centenary, the story of the plant hunter George Forrest, research into honey fungus and phosphorus toxicity in Australian plants, and surveys of everything from Mexican oaks to spider plants. It is a mix no other British magazine attempts: scholarly but never dry, practical but never shallow.
Plant trials and science
One of the magazine's most valued roles is reporting the results of RHS plant trials. These long-running comparative trials — of agapanthus, ornamental grasses, witch hazels and many other groups — test dozens of cultivars side by side over several years, and The Plant Review publishes the detailed findings: which varieties performed best, which earned the Award of Garden Merit, and what the results mean for gardeners choosing plants.
The magazine also translates botanical science for a gardening audience. Articles on subjects such as molecular taxonomy, plant physiology and the ecology of garden plants keep readers abreast of research that is reshaping horticulture, while features on plant conservation highlight the work being done to safeguard threatened species both in gardens and in the wild.
Contributors
The Plant Review's authority rests on its contributors: acknowledged experts writing about the plants they know best. Regular and past contributors include some of the most respected names in British horticulture — plantsmen and women, botanists, breeders, nursery owners and garden writers — alongside international voices from botanic gardens and arboreta around the world.
The June 2019 issue marked the magazine's 40th anniversary with a celebratory retrospective, "Celebrating 40 years of the best plants", featuring Hugh Johnson and fellow plantspeople looking back over four decades of the title. It was a reminder of the extraordinary community of expertise the magazine has gathered around itself since 1979.
Format and frequency
The Plant Review is published quarterly, in March, June, September and December, each issue running to 68 full-colour pages. The format is closer to a journal than a newsstand magazine: substantial articles, high-quality photography and botanical illustration, and a calm, uncluttered design that lets the plants take centre stage.
Back issues are available from the RHS, and the Society publishes online highlights from each year's issues, allowing readers to catch up on features they missed and giving prospective subscribers a clear sense of what the magazine offers.
Relationship to other RHS publications
Within the RHS publishing family, The Plant Review complements rather than competes with its stablemates. The Garden, the Society's monthly membership magazine, covers the full sweep of gardening life with news, practical advice and garden visiting; The Plant Review goes deeper on plants themselves. At the other end of the spectrum, the Society's scientific journals serve professional researchers.
The magazine also stands in a distinguished lineage of RHS botanical publishing that includes Curtis's Botanical Magazine, the world's longest-running botanical periodical, published by the Society since the nineteenth century. Together these titles represent the RHS's commitment to plant knowledge at every level, from the beginner gardener to the professional taxonomist.
Readership and legacy
The readership of The Plant Review is the committed core of British gardening: the plantspeople who join plant societies, visit specialist nurseries, enter shows and read about taxonomy for pleasure. For them, the magazine is not just informative but formative — many of today's leading horticulturists grew up reading The Plantsman.
Nearly half a century after its launch, the magazine remains what it has always been: the place where the British gardening world thinks seriously about plants. The 2019 renaming to The Plant Review ensured that this tradition continues under a name that describes exactly what the magazine does — review the world of plants, in depth, four times a year.
