Are your houseplants environmentally friendly? | James Wong

Keep your ‘plant miles’ down by following these tips on importing, greenhouse use and propogating

I have been getting loads of questions about the sustainability of houseplants recently. To me, it’s very encouraging that people are so interested in greening their indoors (in both senses of the word). Here is a quick run down on the environmental impact of houseplants, and how to shrink it as much as you can.

The major concern I hear is that the vast majority of houseplants sold in the UK are imported, racking up “plant miles” on their journey from the huge nurseries in the Netherlands. However, all you need do is look at a map to see that Holland is as close, if not closer, to many of us here in Britain than other parts of the UK. Secondly, these plants are transported here by road and ferry, which produces not only a fraction of the carbon emissions per mile of flying, but significantly less than smaller scale deliveries would generate from UK nurseries. If you are driving to your garden centre to buy houseplants, the emissions from your car will almost certainly be greater than the emissions generated in getting it from grower to garden centre. In fact, it is fair to say that in the production chain of houseplants, transport is one of the lowest sources of carbon emissions wherever you chose to source them from.

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Hungry birds and marauding moles create a sense of wonder

Fill up the feeders, grab some binoculars and a guidebook, and watch as the tits, finches and blackbirds swoop in

Denmark, end of December. The constant sound of the sea, the smell of wood smoke and salt. The air is almost kippered. It’s the wettest winter since their records began. Flowering daisies in the long grass, dead leaves lie like damp leather. Confused new shoots everywhere.

The moles have been busy tunnelling under the mossy ‘lawn’. I shovel up 20 hills, barrow the sandy soil to the edges of the plot. The raked-up leaf will lie there, too. I will sow it with wild flower seed in early summer to join the wood anemone, hepatica, forget-me-not and campion that thrive in the more shadowy spaces.

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Hungry birds and marauding moles create a sense of wonder

Fill up the feeders, grab some binoculars and a guidebook, and watch as the tits, finches and blackbirds swoop in

Denmark, end of December. The constant sound of the sea, the smell of wood smoke and salt. The air is almost kippered. It’s the wettest winter since their records began. Flowering daisies in the long grass, dead leaves lie like damp leather. Confused new shoots everywhere.

The moles have been busy tunnelling under the mossy ‘lawn’. I shovel up 20 hills, barrow the sandy soil to the edges of the plot. The raked-up leaf will lie there, too. I will sow it with wild flower seed in early summer to join the wood anemone, hepatica, forget-me-not and campion that thrive in the more shadowy spaces.

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Tranquil Dawn named Dulux’s Colour of the Year for 2020 Nottingham Estate Agents

The start of a decade brings new beginnings – and Dulux thinks it has just the colour for the occasion. The paint brand bring together a panel of international designers every year to pick a hue that best captures the moment – the Colour of the Year 2019 was Spiced Honey. This year the team […]

The post Tranquil Dawn named Dulux’s Colour of the Year for 2020 appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Norman conquest: an imaginatively restored French farmhouse

With everything from running water to a new roof needed, the key to updating this once-derelict farm in Normandy was patience

When Vincent Dewas first came to view the farm that is now his Normandy home, several potential buyers had already been put off by its derelict condition. But one glance at the property and its adjoining outhouses, built in 1875, was all it took. “I didn’t need to go inside to make up my mind,” he says. “What sold it to me was its proportions, the extensive grounds and the fact it sits quietly in Le Perche national park, close to the village of Bellême, surrounded by trees and cows. I told the agent I wanted it and I signed the papers there and then on the bonnet of the car.”

In France, we take the occupation of antique-hunting so seriously that we have a verb for it – chiner

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Norman conquest: an imaginatively restored French farmhouse

With everything from running water to a new roof needed, the key to updating this once-derelict farm in Normandy was patience

When Vincent Dewas first came to view the farm that is now his Normandy home, several potential buyers had already been put off by its derelict condition. But one glance at the property and its adjoining outhouses, built in 1875, was all it took. “I didn’t need to go inside to make up my mind,” he says. “What sold it to me was its proportions, the extensive grounds and the fact it sits quietly in Le Perche national park, close to the village of Bellême, surrounded by trees and cows. I told the agent I wanted it and I signed the papers there and then on the bonnet of the car.”

In France, we take the occupation of antique-hunting so seriously that we have a verb for it – chiner

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Illuminating: the making of Bert Frank's luxury lighting – in pictures

Robbie Llewellyn and Adam Yeats met by chance at a London lighting shop, and soon found they shared a vision. Llewellyn’s design ideas and Yeats’s industrial knowledge have been beautifully combined to create Bert Frank.

In Yeats’s presswork factory in Clerkenwell, London – a high-end metalwork enterprise that has been in existence for more than a century – old-school manufacturing techniques and cutting-edge technology are used to produce the brass and copper shapes layered with alabaster, marble, smoked glass and bone china, that have become Bert Frank’s hallmark design

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