Gardening tips: plant Mexican orange blossom

Plus how to get rid of aphids organically, and learn about garden wildlife at RHS Hyde Hall

Plant this Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata) doesn’t give you oranges but this shrub has much to offer: evergreen aromatic foliage, fragrant white flowers in spring and late summer, and an ability to thrive in many different garden settings. The cultivar ‘Aztec Pearl’ has finer foliage and a compact form.

Try this Aphid invasion? Using pesticides is a short-term solution that removes a valuable food source for other creatures, so squish with your fingers or dislodge with a blast from the hosepipe. Attract hoverflies, ladybirds and other aphid predators by planting herb fennel, achillea and marigolds (Tagetes tenuifolia).

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How to grow beans | Alys Fowler

If you want to make your mark on sustainable eating then growing your own beans is the way to do it

I rattle a glass jar of black beans and take the last handful out to plant again. This has been my routine for some years – saving the last handful of good beans to start the whole process again. If you truly want to make your mark on sustainable eating, then growing your own beans is the way to do it.

Packed full of protein, potassium (a single serving offers up the same amount as a serving of cow’s milk), as well as other important micronutrients such as magnesium, folate, iron and zinc, as well as fibre, making them a low GI food, they are very good for you. They’re also good for the environment: their nitrogen-fixing roots leave the soil in good health. And they take up a fraction of the space you may need for other staples, such as pumpkins or potatoes, meaning they are ideal for growing in small areas.

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Over a quarter of properties are still on the market after six months

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Super rich buying up Italy's mansions under new tax regime

‘You get the same sort of tax savings you get in Jersey but you get to live somewhere you actually want to live’

Luxury Tuscan estate agent Ian Heath is developing a taste for private jets. “It’s not that unusual anymore,” Heath says of hitching a ride on a billionaire’s jet to the Italian Riviera last week to give the wealthy client a tour of some of the most luxurious and expensive homes.

“These guys fly around the world in their jets and helicopters,” says Heath, a senior agent at Italian estate agency Lionard. “It makes sense to use them for viewings. The problem was we still had to drive from Genoa to Portofino.” In one day, they viewed half a dozen luxury villas dotted along the Ligurian coast and castles on the hills surrounding Florence. The cheapest one they saw was on the market for €10m (£8.4m).

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Let’s move to Hornsey, north London: pricey, yes, but not bad for these parts

Slightly more affordable than its posh neighbours, and it still has a ‘proper’ high street, nice parks and stout Edwardian pubs

What’s going for it? I like a hill. I live on a hill. I get claustrophobic in the vast, mostly hill-free (or hill-lite) stretches of east or west London. I can’t see out. “Always buy on a hill,” an estate agent once told me, “won’t get flooded” – a bit of folk wisdom that, in our benighted times of April heatwaves, has an added urgency. It’s borne out in social geography, in the UK at least, where posh Johnnies tend to live on hills, all the better to escape the noxious fumes and hoi polloi. Most of north London’s hills – from Hampstead to Muswell Hill – have long, long been out of bounds for the likes of us. Hornsey, sliding down Lea Valley hillside and touched by Harringay and Wood Green, is still out of bounds, but, I don’t know, maybe on a good day, with the wind behind us, and saving all our pennies from the back of the sofa, we could club together for a roomshare. Its high street is still “proper”, with hardware shops and “continental grocers” alongside the inevitable incoming coffee palaces. There’s a nook of the old village by the parish church, nice parks, stout Edwardian pubs such as the Great Northern Railway Tavern, and, looming above all at the crown of the hill, the crouching bulk of Alexandra Palace. At least the view from the top is free.

The case against Still blooming expensive, just, in the way that London works, not quite as expensive as its fancier neighbours.

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Let’s move to Hornsey, north London: pricey, yes, but not bad for these parts

Slightly more affordable than its posh neighbours, and it still has a ‘proper’ high street, nice parks and stout Edwardian pubs

What’s going for it? I like a hill. I live on a hill. I get claustrophobic in the vast, mostly hill-free (or hill-lite) stretches of east or west London. I can’t see out. “Always buy on a hill,” an estate agent once told me, “won’t get flooded” – a bit of folk wisdom that, in our benighted times of April heatwaves, has an added urgency. It’s borne out in social geography, in the UK at least, where posh Johnnies tend to live on hills, all the better to escape the noxious fumes and hoi polloi. Most of north London’s hills – from Hampstead to Muswell Hill – have long, long been out of bounds for the likes of us. Hornsey, sliding down Lea Valley hillside and touched by Harringay and Wood Green, is still out of bounds, but, I don’t know, maybe on a good day, with the wind behind us, and saving all our pennies from the back of the sofa, we could club together for a roomshare. Its high street is still “proper”, with hardware shops and “continental grocers” alongside the inevitable incoming coffee palaces. There’s a nook of the old village by the parish church, nice parks, stout Edwardian pubs such as the Great Northern Railway Tavern, and, looming above all at the crown of the hill, the crouching bulk of Alexandra Palace. At least the view from the top is free.

The case against Still blooming expensive, just, in the way that London works, not quite as expensive as its fancier neighbours.

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What’s for sale near Harry & Meghan’s Frogmore Cottage?

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