Dramatic spaces: raising the curtain on an actor’s bolthole

Dominic Cooper’s penthouse provides a welcome escape from the ‘chaos and madness’ of life on screen

Bringing your work home with you takes on a whole new meaning in Dominic Cooper’s Victorian terraced property in north London. One bedroom is furnished entirely with pieces from the New York hotel room set seen in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again in which he reprises his character Sky. “I really needed to do the room up quickly and so I bought all of the furniture from that set after the film was finished. I call it the Mamma Mia! floor.”

Occupying the second and third floors of a three-storey terrace, the property comprised a two-bedroom flat on the third floor and a one-bedroom on the second floor when Cooper bought it. Seeing the potential to extend into the eves of the roof, he enlisted E2 architects to create an upper floor open-plan loft-style kitchen-living space, adding reclaimed rustic timber joists in the ceiling and an exposed brick wall to contrast with the grey brick tiles in the sleek, modern white kitchen. A skylight punctuates the wood joists, flooding the room with natural light. “I’ve been slowly working my way down the building,” says Cooper, “buying different bits of it and turning it into a home.”

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Gardening tips: plant a beach aster for a slice of the seaside

Then prepare potted plants for your own holiday, and visit Arundel Castle

Plant this Get the seaside look with the drought-tolerant daisy flowers of the beach aster, Erigeron glaucus ‘Sea Breeze’. Perfect for gravel gardens, crevice gardens and romping along a drystone wall. It needs full sun, and there are two forms, pink and mauve – both a ground-hugging 30cm x 40cm.

Try this Trips away can leave pots and hanging baskets parched. If you can’t get a friend to water, gather containers together in a shady corner to reduce evaporation, water before you go, and buy watering spikes to keep plants moist. Terracotta pots will dry out much quicker than plastic ones.

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Out of the shadows: plants that thrive in shady gardens

Glossy and somtimes surprisingly lush and tropical, greens that favour dark corners can create a deeply restorative space

Deep shade doesn’t even flirt with the sun. In the penumbra cast in this shadowy world, plants that thrive have had to adapt to just glimmers of light – deep shade is defined as having less than two hours of sunlight a day.

The leaves of shade-loving plants often have a deep-green colour, and tend to be thinner and broader than their sun-loving cousins. This is because they have adapted to absorb the filtered light under the forest canopy. They are also usually shinier, to reflect light into the margins and corners of their world. It takes a lot of energy to grow in such poor light conditions, and a greater allocation of energy goes into defence mechanisms against hungry herbivores. These plants have camouflaged, often mottled leaves and inconspicuous flowers and fruit compared with sun worshippers.

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How to grow cress | Alys Fowler

If ever there was a plant for window box-growing, this is the one, says our gardening expert

Wrinkled Crinkled Crumpled cress: has anything ever sounded more pleasing to grow? It sounds like the stuff of story books, afternoon tea, and of course egg sandwiches. It is the same cress you used to grow in an egg shell or on a piece of damp kitchen paper, but a much better variety, with ruffled edges.

Lepidium sativum is a very old vegetable from the Middle East, in the brassica family. Sativum translates as “from seed”, meaning it was cultivated, and you can trace its history back to early Persian vegetable gardens in 400BC.

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Gardening tips: plant a beach aster for a slice of the seaside

Then prepare potted plants for your own holiday, and visit Arundel Castle

Plant this Get the seaside look with the drought-tolerant daisy flowers of the beach aster, Erigeron glaucus ‘Sea Breeze’. Perfect for gravel gardens, crevice gardens and romping along a drystone wall. It needs full sun, and there are two forms, pink and mauve – both a ground-hugging 30cm x 40cm.

Try this Trips away can leave pots and hanging baskets parched. If you can’t get a friend to water, gather containers together in a shady corner to reduce evaporation, water before you go, and buy watering spikes to keep plants moist. Terracotta pots will dry out much quicker than plastic ones.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2KTzcPg
via IFTTT

Out of the shadows: plants that thrive in shady gardens

Glossy and somtimes surprisingly lush and tropical, greens that favour dark corners can create a deeply restorative space

Deep shade doesn’t even flirt with the sun. In the penumbra cast in this shadowy world, plants that thrive have had to adapt to just glimmers of light – deep shade is defined as having less than two hours of sunlight a day.

The leaves of shade-loving plants often have a deep-green colour, and tend to be thinner and broader than their sun-loving cousins. This is because they have adapted to absorb the filtered light under the forest canopy. They are also usually shinier, to reflect light into the margins and corners of their world. It takes a lot of energy to grow in such poor light conditions, and a greater allocation of energy goes into defence mechanisms against hungry herbivores. These plants have camouflaged, often mottled leaves and inconspicuous flowers and fruit compared with sun worshippers.

Continue reading...

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via IFTTT

How to grow cress | Alys Fowler

If ever there was a plant for window box-growing, this is the one, says our gardening expert

Wrinkled Crinkled Crumpled cress: has anything ever sounded more pleasing to grow? It sounds like the stuff of story books, afternoon tea, and of course egg sandwiches. It is the same cress you used to grow in an egg shell or on a piece of damp kitchen paper, but a much better variety, with ruffled edges.

Lepidium sativum is a very old vegetable from the Middle East, in the brassica family. Sativum translates as “from seed”, meaning it was cultivated, and you can trace its history back to early Persian vegetable gardens in 400BC.

Continue reading...

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