‘Strange and delicious’: a guide to pickling young petals | Alys Fowler

Douse young blossoms such as magnolia and dandelion in vinegar to make peppery preserves this spring

Having made peace with my magnolia, Magnolia x soulangeana, and accepted that the bottom of my garden will always be cast in its dappled shade, I’ve rather fallen in love with its twisted trunks and its flurry of pink blossom. As it began to unfurl, the first smudges of pink against the sky had me reaching for the vinegar.

Pickled magnolia buds and young petals are strange and delicious. Each species has a slightly different flavour, but the base notes are gingery and peppery. This quickly turns perfumed and then, if the petals are too mature, bitter. But if you get in there when the petals are young and add vinegar, everything is enhanced in the most marvellous manner.

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Gardening tips: plant some brunneras

Then try stooling your willows – and check out the RHS’s Spring Launch and Orchid show

Plant this Brunneras are brilliant spring all-rounders for shadier spots, with starry, blue flowers and heart-shaped leaves. There are many eye-catching cultivars, including the green and cream-splotched B macrophylla ‘Hadspen Cream’, silvery ‘Looking Glass’ and silver-etched ‘Jack Frost’.

Try this Stooling is a technique used to cut willows, white-stemmed bramble (Rubus cockburnianus) and dogwoods back hard in spring, to prompt the growth of young stems. Now is the time to do it: cut back all stems to just above the base with a sharp pair of secateurs or a pruning saw. Repeat every year or two.

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Nationwide gets back to its roots by building homes

Building society takes on the developers with plans for not-for-profit homes

A century ago the predecessor to today’s Nationwide building society was instrumental in building Letchworth, the first of Britain’s garden cities. Now the mutual society is going back to the future and is to start building homes again for the first time in a hundred years, in a revolutionary not-for-profit venture challenging the major housebuilders’ grip on the property market.

The society is starting small. The project, called Oakfield, close to Nationwide’s headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire, is for 239 homes, making it a new neighbourhood, not a new town. It is aiming to build better – and bigger – homes as it has to cover just its costs, not squeeze out the 20%-plus margins that the big housebuilders usually expect.

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REVEALED: Bexley is the most affordable place to rent in London Nottingham Estate Agents

Our most recent data has revealed that living as a group of four in Bexley, South East London, is the cheapest way to rent in London. Assuming the scenario of one person, per bedroom, the data uses average rental prices to determine whether one, two, three or four bedroom properties are the best value in each […]

The post REVEALED: Bexley is the most affordable place to rent in London appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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The butterfly bush thrives in London | Letter

Gavin Weightman responds to a column by Adrian Chiles about buddleia

So Adrian Chiles (G2, 4 April) has noticed buddleia bushes growing out of derelict buildings and judges them to signify industrial neglect. He suggests the plant does not grow so much in London because land is too expensive. In fact buddleia grows everywhere in London, sprouting from the tops of many buildings that are not abandoned and forming great thickets along railway lines. It is also a prized garden plant, attracting a great variety of insects, and is commonly called “the butterfly bush”. And though it is from China and was brought to Europe by a Frenchman, Linnaeus named it after the Rev Adam Buddle of Hadleigh rectory, Essex, in honour of observations he had made of local plants. Buddle never saw the butterfly bush, as he died more than a century before it was introduced in the last decade of Victoria’s reign.
Gavin Weightman
London

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The butterfly bush thrives in London | Letter

Gavin Weightman responds to a column by Adrian Chiles about buddleia

So Adrian Chiles (G2, 4 April) has noticed buddleia bushes growing out of derelict buildings and judges them to signify industrial neglect. He suggests the plant does not grow so much in London because land is too expensive. In fact buddleia grows everywhere in London, sprouting from the tops of many buildings that are not abandoned and forming great thickets along railway lines. It is also a prized garden plant, attracting a great variety of insects, and is commonly called “the butterfly bush”. And though it is from China and was brought to Europe by a Frenchman, Linnaeus named it after the Rev Adam Buddle of Hadleigh rectory, Essex, in honour of observations he had made of local plants. Buddle never saw the butterfly bush, as he died more than a century before it was introduced in the last decade of Victoria’s reign.
Gavin Weightman
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Let’s move to Whitstable, Kent: pockets of peace on the gentrified seaside

The town still manages to balance quite-posh delis with men’s outfitters from the age of Perry Como

What’s going for it? I’m an old hand at Whitstable. Not as old as some of the seadogs nursing pints in the Neptune. But I’ve been coming here since the days when, if fortune smiled, you might spy the elderly Peter Cushing – then the town’s starriest resident – pottering along the high street. What a difference 30 years makes. My latest trip confirms that Whitstable has reached stage four of gentrification. We’ve had the Shabby Artists stage, the Cute Vintage Shop stage, the Actually Quite Posh Delis Have Opened stage. Now some serious money has arrived: The Building Of Fancy New Houses That Look As If Their Owners Have Watched Too Many Episodes Of Grand Designs stage. This lot aren’t content with discreet renovations of weatherboarded fishermen’s cottages. They want swagger. They want bling. I hope it’s not the town’s downfall. The place still, just, manages to balance quite-posh delis with men’s outfitters from the age of Perry Como, and its community is still as strong as they come. Its working harbour, graced by a gravel processing plant, is still wonderfully unpretty. Long may it continue.

The case against… On the threshold of change. Already too cutesy for some. Holiday and weekend homes have brought hefty cultural change.

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