Early primroses come with memories of love and mothers

We’re past the equinox, a time to look ahead to new blooms, as well as back to treasured memories

We’re there. Winter’s over: we passed the vernal equinox – 3.40am, Friday 20 March – when daylight wins over darkness. When spring and seeds and hopes for the year are safely unleashed. When most gardeners start trickling back.

Today is also Mothering Sunday. For many it’s a day to look back as well as forward. For me, it means primroses. One of the few days when Lilian would go to church, with many other mums, to be given flowers picked by the village school kids. My reluctant brother and me draped in cassocks and surplices in the choir. Devon hedgerows in the 60s were awash with primrose, so everyone picked them for Mother’s Day, encouraged by their teachers. A lot less likely now, I think.

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Our California dream home: bringing the Arts & Crafts to life

A historic house that echoes with old features, bespoke furniture and a superb location is also a warm and welcoming family home

When Jennifer Doebler and her husband Pat Kelly made the move from an apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to San Francisco they still wanted to feel as though they were at the centre of things. But they also wanted a true family escape and a forever house for themselves and their two daughters. They found a way of balancing their needs in the form of an Arts & Crafts home in bustling Berkeley, just across the Bay from San Francisco proper.

“The houses are cheek-to-jowl in Berkeley, but we have a good-sized lot and a garden that is private and beautiful,” says Jennifer, who is, along with her husband, an executive in the world of pharmaceuticals. “We loved the shape of the house, the redwood, the windows and the views, and we could picture our family and our two girls growing up very happily here.”

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Our California dream home: bringing the Arts & Crafts to life

A historic house that echoes with old features, bespoke furniture and a superb location is also a warm and welcoming family home

When Jennifer Doebler and her husband Pat Kelly made the move from an apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to San Francisco they still wanted to feel as though they were at the centre of things. But they also wanted a true family escape and a forever house for themselves and their two daughters. They found a way of balancing their needs in the form of an Arts & Crafts home in bustling Berkeley, just across the Bay from San Francisco proper.

“The houses are cheek-to-jowl in Berkeley, but we have a good-sized lot and a garden that is private and beautiful,” says Jennifer, who is, along with her husband, an executive in the world of pharmaceuticals. “We loved the shape of the house, the redwood, the windows and the views, and we could picture our family and our two girls growing up very happily here.”

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Shared ownership flats: ‘Mum died not knowing I would be left with £25,000 debt’

Lois Ploughman thought her property was a sound investment to leave her family. Instead, her daughter was bequeathed a huge headache

A woman has accused a housing association of saddling her late mother’s estate with a £25,000-plus debt that is growing by more than £1,000 a month.

When Penny Ashcroft’s mother Lois Plowman died of cancer aged 69 in 2018, she owned a 25% share of a shared ownership flat in London – all she had to leave to her children.

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Aussie rules: an old Melbourne bookshop transformed into a modern family home

A designer has breathed new life into a narrow building that was once the city’s first feminist book store

When Kate Challis’s husband was a student in Melbourne in the 1990s, he bought a copy of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale from the city’s first feminist book store. On a busy street in the then-gritty district of Fitzroy, Shrew women’s bookshop was one of the few places in the city that sold Atwood’s work. Today, that same narrow shop, former centre of feminist and LGBTQ radicalism, is home to Challis, a designer with a PhD in art history, her husband, and their 11-year-old son. It is one of a row of 16 original shops that were built in 1892, of which four remain.

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How to grow blueberries | Alys Fowler

To enjoy a summer crop, the trick is in the soil, which should be acidic, porous and damp

I cannot say that I am exactly rich in blueberries; my harvest is modest, but for three or four weeks I can pick handfuls to scatter over my breakfast cornflakes. It never occurs to me to want blueberries, or cornflakes for that matter, outside of this brief summer fling, but for those glorious mornings my pleasure is sated.

Blueberries are acid fans and that makes them tricky to please, because they want garden soil with a pH between 4.5-5.5; most sit somewhere around 6.5-7.5. And therein lies the problem. Blueberries in the wrong pH sulk and can turn chlorotic: the leaves go sickly pale green; the plant becomes stunted; yields disappear.

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Gardening tips: plant wallflowers for a vivid display

Then invest in a collapsible cloche to keep pests off your veg and add compost to raised beds and pots

Plant this Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ is a pretty purple wallflower that you can plant for a spring display, and enjoy the blooms until midsummer. It needs full sun: take cuttings from sideshoots in summer as this is a shortlived perennial. Height and spread: 75cm x 60cm.

Buy this If pigeons and other pests obliterated your vegetables last year, coordinate the fightback now: the brolly cloche opens like an umbrella and pegs into place to keep your kale hole-free: £24.99 from the Organic Gardening Catalogue.

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