Plan your plot for 2020: think about seeds and new beds

It’s cold and quiet, but the stirrings of a brighter future are starting

New dawn, new day, new year. Feeling good about it. Things have turned, honestly. Though there is bound to be wind and rain, maybe snow, we will have an hour a day’s more daylight by the end of the month. The sun is moving, but not yet the temperature, though welcome frost will break up heavy soil.

Try to keep off wet ground to avoid compacting it, but think about seed potatoes. This is the month to order your choices and lay them out in trays to chit. First earlies should be ready for planting in mid-March in warmer areas, but leave it until later where it is cooler. Look out for nearby potato fairs (potato-days.net) where you can also buy onion sets and shallots for planting in the coming months. Reacquaint yourself with a good garden centre.

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How much value does an extra bathroom add? Nottingham Estate Agents

Gone are the days when family members were happy to take their turn in the bathroom. Make no mistake: a house with two bathrooms trumps a home with just one. In the shopping list of building works that can add significant value to a property – from conservatories to loft conversions to new kitchens – […]

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Excess all areas: inside the home of Rockett St George's founder

A designer’s impulsive and quirky approach to interiors means her London home is packed with interest

Every room in Lucy St George’s north London home is a different size and shape. This suits the designer perfectly, because she’s “always been a fan of the one-off and the quirky”. St George’s love of the offbeat is the reason she co-founded Rockett St George with business partner Jane Rockett, in 2007. Since then the homewares brand has acquired a reputation for witty pieces – flamingo-legged lamps, hand-shaped chairs – inspired by their vintage finds. “We’ve always sold things we like: eccentric designs with personality.”

The home she shares with her two daughters feels out of the ordinary, too. Outside, it’s a standard Edwardian terraced house: brick-fronted and bay-windowed, with stained-glass panels glowing in the wide front door. Inside, the look is Studio 54 with a bit of fin de siècle excess. Surfaces gleam with gold and silver. Classical sculptures lurk among the waxy houseplants. A disco ball scatters sunbeams across the ceiling – like a blingy Jackson Pollock – in the afternoon: “We call it disco o’clock.”

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Excess all areas: inside the home of Rockett St George's founder

A designer’s impulsive and quirky approach to interiors means her London home is packed with interest

Every room in Lucy St George’s north London home is a different size and shape. This suits the designer perfectly, because she’s “always been a fan of the one-off and the quirky”. St George’s love of the offbeat is the reason she co-founded Rockett St George with business partner Jane Rockett, in 2007. Since then the homewares brand has acquired a reputation for witty pieces – flamingo-legged lamps, hand-shaped chairs – inspired by their vintage finds. “We’ve always sold things we like: eccentric designs with personality.”

The home she shares with her two daughters feels out of the ordinary, too. Outside, it’s a standard Edwardian terraced house: brick-fronted and bay-windowed, with stained-glass panels glowing in the wide front door. Inside, the look is Studio 54 with a bit of fin de siècle excess. Surfaces gleam with gold and silver. Classical sculptures lurk among the waxy houseplants. A disco ball scatters sunbeams across the ceiling – like a blingy Jackson Pollock – in the afternoon: “We call it disco o’clock.”

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Gardening tips: sow sweet peas

Then plant a witch hazel and buy a garden journal

Plant this Witch hazels are one of the earliest things to flower every year, their scented, spidery flowers in citrus shades unfurling to lure you into the garden for a sniff. These tolerant, hardy, slow-growing shrubs will do well in full sun or part shade. My favourite is ‘Jelena’ with its burnt-orange blooms.

Note this If the new year has filled you with anticipation for the growing season, it’s time to get organised. Green Conspiracy’s Garden Journal, is a beautifully designed notebook to record all your ideas.

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Ice cool: a contemporary retreat in the heart of a winter wonderland

Deep in a Finnish forest, this lakeside summer house, home to a busy, retired couple and their extended family, is the perfect winter retreat, too

On the shores of Saimaa, Finland’s largest lake, surrounded by pine, fir and birch trees, sits an angular, architect-designed house, black on the outside, shiny white on the inside (and, when the snow arrives and the lake freezes, white all around, too). A three-hour drive north-east of the capital, it’s the almost full-time home of retired journalists Leena Karo and Seppo Toivonen. And the architect in question is their son, Tuomas Toivonen, who built his parents’ house in 2008.

The idea was to create a family home large enough for Leena and Seppo to live in year round (they also have an apartment in Helsinki) and for Tuomas, his sister Roosa, a film director, and their families to spend time there, too.

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What to do with your Christmas tree | Alys Fowler

The needles make excellent ericaceous compost and the branches can be used for pea or bean supports

Is your Christmas tree looking a little sad? One might imagine it is by now, for the ghost has truly flown, and left a flurry of needles on your floor. Still, let us not waste this moment to honour the tree’s life with a good bit of recycling.

If I am honest, I don’t have a tree to recycle because I am not a fan of the Christmas tree tradition. So mostly I have to steal other people’s trees. I go around collecting up the corpses left out with the bins (clearly not the ones destined for the council recycling scheme) and take them back to my allotment.

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