Grow your likes: the unstoppable rise of the Insta plant

They’re green, photogenic and social media stars

Instagram may well have changed the way you garden, even if you don’t have an account. From the plants you buy – and where you buy them – to the gardens you visit, the platform has driven a profound change in the tastes and habits of even established gardeners, not to mention encouraging a new generation of green fingers.

Plants have been inspiring artists for hundreds of years, so they are well suited to the photo app. A younger generation (urban, cash-strapped, Insta-obsessed and renting) are driving houseplant sales, sharing pictures of their plant babies instead of the human ones they can’t afford. From the dramatic structure of mother-in-law’s tongue to blousy tea roses, you can say a lot about your taste through the species you share. Connecting with nature reduces stress, much needed in these chaotic times; even bursts of online greenery, amid Instagram’s sometimes frantic commercialism, are a tonic.

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Gardening tips: chit potatoes for an early summer crop

Then plant a dark-leaved elder and visit Bicton Park Botanical Gardens in Devon

Plant this Dark-leaved elder (Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Black Tower’) produces pink flowers in spring followed by elderberries. It has the added benefit of growing up rather than out, making it ideal for smaller gardens. Height and spread 250cm x 120cm: full sun or partial shade.

Chit this Get some potatoes sprouting now and they’ll be ready by early summer. Try ‘Kifli’, a blight-resistant, high-yielding salad potato that’s ideal for planting in sacks or pots. The first step is chitting: place tubers in an old egg box, blunt end uppermost, on a windowsill until the shoots are about 2cm long.

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Flowers to sow for a summer wedding | Alys Fowler

Pot marigolds are the kindest, easiest, most trustworthy of flowers that reflect the values of the woman I shall marry

This summer I’ve a wedding to grow flowers for: my own. And for someone who has known about this for some time, I have left it all rather late, but there you go. It’s not my first time doing this, so I know full well that you have to start a lot earlier than a couple of months before the big day.

With this in mind, I recently opened the Chiltern Seed catalogue and weighed up my options. Frothy ammi and sprinkles of dusky pink wild carrots are unlikely to be ready in time. The same could be said of cosmos, nicotiana, zinnia, oryla; the list goes on. Of course, it is possible to force many of these things, but that would require a greenhouse and a schedule to be around every weekend for watering.

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Renting in London: Top tips to stay ahead of the game Nottingham Estate Agents

London has a sense of energy and vibrancy like no other city. And if you are thinking of moving to or within the capital, you want to be in the heart of the action, or close to good transport links. The London rental sector is so vast, and so varied, that it remains highly competitive even in premium areas. […]

The post Renting in London: Top tips to stay ahead of the game appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Rambling solution to weekend loneliness | Brief letters

Berkeley Homes | Journal joy | Marmalade | Walking | Church

Your article’s description of a property in Southwater (Fantasy house hunt, 18 January) may give the impression that Berkeley Homes benevolently provided the facilities mentioned as new to the village. In fact, the sports and social club, including the cricket pavilion, cricket and football pitches and playground, had been in existence for many years. However, as part of their massive housing development encompassed all the land they were on, they simply replaced the existing buildings and facilities further up the hill on the edge of an unremarkable estate.
G Butler
Southwater, West Sussex

• Thank you for a marvellously readable Journal on Thursday: Owen Jones on crime, punishment and rehabilitation; Martin Kettle on Brexit; Suzanne Moore; a wonderful obituary on Terry Jones by Stuart Jeffries; a long-overdue long read on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe by Patrick Wintour. And I haven’t even mentioned the letters page. Worth every penny of my subscription.
Jan Jeffries
Brewood, Staffordshire

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Let’s move to Romney Marsh, Kent: ‘It takes a certain someone to love it’

Many will run for the hills, but others find its squelchy fields, sluice gates and forlorn villages impossibly romantic

What’s going for it? It takes a certain someone to love Romney Marsh. That someone happens to be me. Many will gaze at its landscape of squelchy flat fields, sluice gates and forlorn, atmospheric villages, and run for the hills, as they did for centuries. Some, though, will find them all impossibly romantic and fabulously attractive. The neighbourhood did seem to attract those certain someones: Noel Coward, for instance, or Edith Nesbit, seeking escape in a spot lifted above the day-to-day in its own existential universe. It’s hard to fathom exactly where Romney Marsh gets its particular character from. Its history of malarial marshes and smugglers’ haunts hangs about like a miasma. The blank landscape is peppered with remote medieval villages, astonishing churches, such as at Fairfield, built on the riches of the wool trade, and flat-faced postwar bungalows, staring out to sea. Or perhaps it’s this landscape’s own peculiar geographical history that is so attractive, its sense of temporariness, of the mastery of nature. The fortunes of Romney Marsh and its inhabitants have risen and fallen with the tides, and the accumulation of silt and shingle. These flatlands, just north of Dungeness, were once the English Channel, the now redundant cliffs arcing miles from the sea, from Hythe to Rye. This patch of land has only been lent to Britain by the waves, and the waves might want it back some day.

The case against Bleak. Roads that turn and twist violently, dangerously, with the ditches.

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Let’s move to Romney Marsh, Kent: ‘It takes a certain someone to love it’

Many will run for the hills, but others find its squelchy fields, sluice gates and forlorn villages impossibly romantic

What’s going for it? It takes a certain someone to love Romney Marsh. That someone happens to be me. Many will gaze at its landscape of squelchy flat fields, sluice gates and forlorn, atmospheric villages, and run for the hills, as they did for centuries. Some, though, will find them all impossibly romantic and fabulously attractive. The neighbourhood did seem to attract those certain someones: Noel Coward, for instance, or Edith Nesbit, seeking escape in a spot lifted above the day-to-day in its own existential universe. It’s hard to fathom exactly where Romney Marsh gets its particular character from. Its history of malarial marshes and smugglers’ haunts hangs about like a miasma. The blank landscape is peppered with remote medieval villages, astonishing churches, such as at Fairfield, built on the riches of the wool trade, and flat-faced postwar bungalows, staring out to sea. Or perhaps it’s this landscape’s own peculiar geographical history that is so attractive, its sense of temporariness, of the mastery of nature. The fortunes of Romney Marsh and its inhabitants have risen and fallen with the tides, and the accumulation of silt and shingle. These flatlands, just north of Dungeness, were once the English Channel, the now redundant cliffs arcing miles from the sea, from Hythe to Rye. This patch of land has only been lent to Britain by the waves, and the waves might want it back some day.

The case against Bleak. Roads that turn and twist violently, dangerously, with the ditches.

Continue reading...

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