Home improvement

Kale chips anyone? What veggies to eat boiled, raw or roasted.

If chillies weren’t so delicious (in small amounts, unless you love dragon’s breath) we’d grow them for their beauty. A chilli bush in full fruit is a stunning plant: bright green leaves and even brighter red fruit that hangs there for months. As I write this I’m looking out at our beds of perennial chillies […]

In spring salvias bloom red, blue, purple and yellow. They have enormous bushes, taller than I am, with spires of flowers and dozens of eastern spinebills and other birds sipping at the nectar. By midsummer there are great banks of rich purple flowers that keep giving a stunning show all summer long. At Christmas the […]

You have just mortgaged your life and bought a house — with garden. Or you are paying rent on a house, and a garden comes with it … Or you have had a garden for years but “garden” is a bit of an exaggeration, as it’s mostly weeds, lawn that has to be mowed and […]

Midwinter is the time for feasts — not just around the table, with friends on long cold winter nights, but in the garden, too.. Summer’s harvests often have to be picked fast, before the fruit fly get into the apricots or the lettuces go to seed. Winter harvests are more gentle, and more generous too. […]

Lemon is one of the most magic scents in the garden. Much as I love roses — especially a cloud of rose perfume on a hot day — lemon scents are often stronger, as they come from the leaves, not the flowers. There are more leaves than blooms, so much more scent. This doesn’t mean […]

The first grapes I fell in love with grew next to a tiny cafe on the shore of Crete: a concrete floor, a goat standing on a chair on a table to reach the grapes over the fence, a small cup of too-sweet coffee and above us the glory of grapes, green leaves and bees […]

1. The world is happier with trees: Seriously, areas with trees have a lower crime rate and illness rates. This isn’t just because wealthy areas have brighter gardens and street trees: when trees and greenery are planted in disaffected areas the graffiti and other more serious crimes decrease as the trees grow bigger. It seems […]

One of the worst benevolences ever perpetrated on a generation of children was free milk at school — especially in Queensland where I grew up. Every child had to drink their small bottle of milk every morning. All morning we looked out of our classroom and watched the milk getting hotter and hotter under what […]

It’s berry time — time to eat mulberries or strawberries or loganberries or blueberries on sponge cakes for a Christmas treat. A strawberry-rich sponge cake is much lighter than a hunk of Christmas cake (though a rich fruitcake can’t be beaten in winter). Soon it will be planting time — and now is the best […]