Amateur Gardening is a British weekly magazine dedicated to gardening. It includes news, advice, feature articles, and celebrity columns and interviews. History and the early years Amateur Gardening was founded in London in May 1884 by Shirley Hibberd, who edited it until 1887. This makes it the oldest UK amateur gardening weekly still published today, and was Britain's bestseller in that category in 2013. The magazine is published once a week. Its editorial offices are in Farnborough, Hampshire. At the time of the magazine's launch in 1884 there had been several other notable gardening magazines in circulation, including the Gardeners' Chronicle and Gardens Illustrated, but these were tailored more to the professional gardener. Amateur Gardening is considered the first paper designed specifically for the amateur. The founders were two brothers, W. H. and L. Collingridge, who also produced other periodicals of the time, including the well-known City Press. The first issue of Amateur Gardening consisted of 16 pages, 12 of which were devoted to editorial matter. The first editor, Shirley Hibberd, was a botanist and an academic authority on gardening. He included in the magazine articles which were thought by many to be too technical. He remained the editor for only two years. The man who really established Amateur Gardening was T. W. Sanders, who remained editor for 40 years. Sanders knew exactly what the new generation of amateur gardeners wanted, and his style of editing attracted a wide audience. Before the First World War, a circulation of 100,000 copies per week had been achieved, although this fell off considerably during the war. Not until the mid-1920s did the circulation rise to a healthy level again. Sanders also wrote a large number of books, most notably Sanders' Encyclopaedia of Gardening. This was the "bible" for several generations of gardeners and is consulted even today. In 1926, the magazine suffered a severe blow when Sanders died. The assistant editor, A. J. Macself, was able to take over as editor and steer the magazine through another 20 years of what was probably the most turbulent period in its history. In 1934 Macself presided over the title's 50th birthday party, celebrating in grand style with a dinner for more than 300 people in the New Connaught Rooms in London's Mayfair. The guest list included Lord Aberconway, the then President of the Royal Horticultural Society, Sir Austen Chamberlain (a former Chancellor of the Exchequer)