Floor paint and potted herbs: Five inexpensive ways to freshen up your home

You don’t need to spend money on a statement sofa. Instead, think about your lighting and hunt down vintage pieces in markets and junk shops

It can be tempting – and expensive – to want to furnish a house in one go, but Alexandra Stedman, who runs the interiors and lifestyle site The Frugality, advises living in a space “for as long as possible. The best way of making a house a home is to build things up over time, with things that hold memories. It’s not about buying everything brand new, off the rack. It could be a picture you pick up at a car-boot sale and give a frame six months later, but then it fits that perfect spot on the wall that has been missing something.”

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Sweet treats: berries for tight spaces

The best fruiting plants you can grow in pots and tiny patches

When it comes to growing edible plants, market research has shown that home gardeners are still far more interested in growing vegetables than fruit. Perhaps – because most vegetables are annuals – it is the promise of faster results. Or maybe it’s down to perceived cost – after all, vegetable seeds are far cheaper to buy than fruit bushes or trees. Or maybe it’s just that people are put off by all the complex pruning rules…

However, if it is maximum reward for minimum cost and in minimum space that you are after, fruit beats vegetables hands down by almost every measure. For starters, most fruit bushes are perennial, so will come back year after year without significant extra cost or effort. Add this to the fact that, generally, their harvests cost more to buy, too. So, with this in mind, here’s my take on the best fruiting plants for small patches, all of which you can plant right now.

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Sweet treats: berries for tight spaces

The best fruiting plants you can grow in pots and tiny patches

When it comes to growing edible plants, market research has shown that home gardeners are still far more interested in growing vegetables than fruit. Perhaps – because most vegetables are annuals – it is the promise of faster results. Or maybe it’s down to perceived cost – after all, vegetable seeds are far cheaper to buy than fruit bushes or trees. Or maybe it’s just that people are put off by all the complex pruning rules…

However, if it is maximum reward for minimum cost and in minimum space that you are after, fruit beats vegetables hands down by almost every measure. For starters, most fruit bushes are perennial, so will come back year after year without significant extra cost or effort. Add this to the fact that, generally, their harvests cost more to buy, too. So, with this in mind, here’s my take on the best fruiting plants for small patches, all of which you can plant right now.

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Spring mornings start with gifts and birds | Allan Jenkins

It’s still warming up, but the mornings start sooner, days are longer, and the tadpoles and spring are both wriggling into life

The priory blackbirds are calling, an urgent dawn chorus, no longer one eager male but a full spring choir. Downstairs, seed is stirring, too. Flower and vegetable packets and sacks, speaking to me of urgency. There is a break in the rain, a break in the day (it is still not 6.30am). Memories are moving, warmed by imminent spring. I need to see the allotment. I am going away for a few days for my Danish mother-in-law’s milestone birthday. I need to seek the plot’s permission (odd as this may sound), or at least stop by as if to visit an old friend. I come bearing gifts, companion calendula, in a shade of orange by which all others are judged.

Early spring is bringing longer days, more time for trips before and after work. Today I’ll be back before 8am, armed with warm croissants and crusty bread. Hampstead’s trees are blossoming, crocus and daffodils are out, the site is alive with song. Parakeets screech as they pass overhead, en route from their evening perch at Kew to the heath. The robin joins me on the path.

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Spring mornings start with gifts and birds | Allan Jenkins

It’s still warming up, but the mornings start sooner, days are longer, and the tadpoles and spring are both wriggling into life

The priory blackbirds are calling, an urgent dawn chorus, no longer one eager male but a full spring choir. Downstairs, seed is stirring, too. Flower and vegetable packets and sacks, speaking to me of urgency. There is a break in the rain, a break in the day (it is still not 6.30am). Memories are moving, warmed by imminent spring. I need to see the allotment. I am going away for a few days for my Danish mother-in-law’s milestone birthday. I need to seek the plot’s permission (odd as this may sound), or at least stop by as if to visit an old friend. I come bearing gifts, companion calendula, in a shade of orange by which all others are judged.

Early spring is bringing longer days, more time for trips before and after work. Today I’ll be back before 8am, armed with warm croissants and crusty bread. Hampstead’s trees are blossoming, crocus and daffodils are out, the site is alive with song. Parakeets screech as they pass overhead, en route from their evening perch at Kew to the heath. The robin joins me on the path.

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Should you extend your home or sell it? Nottingham Estate Agents

You are happy in your home, but for one reason and another, it seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Perhaps your cute toddler has grown into a strapping teenager and acquired a younger brother or sister. Perhaps you have bought so many box sets of Game of Thrones that they take up half the […]

The post Should you extend your home or sell it? appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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An artist’s home by the sea

Finding inspiration in a new timber-framed home-cum-studio on the Kent coast

You see the most remarkable skies here – like a miracle of heaven and earth together,” says artist Rachael Dickens of the view from her newly built home, between Herne Bay and Reculver on the Kent coast. A keen outdoor swimmer whose work is often inspired by water, Rachael was first drawn to this site by its setting. “I walk on the beach and swim in the sea nearly every day,” she says, “and the vision for the house was very much about being able to see the sea.” The result is an arresting contemporary home whose jet-black weatherboarding and corrugated roof echo the tarred fishermen’s huts and net lofts typically found in nearby Whitstable.

Rachael came across the plot by accident during a day trip to Whitstable with her sister in 2014. At the time, she was house-hunting without success in south London, after selling her home in Sydenham with a view to moving closer to Brockwell lido. (Rachael has been cold water swimming since 2006 and helped to reform the lido’s original 1930s swimming club: The Brockwell Icicles.) While walking along the east Kent coastline, looping back from Reculver, the sisters stumbled across a small 1930s bungalow for sale right by the shore, but it was in need of modernisation.

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