Country diary: these trees have become part of the family

Stamford, Lincolnshire: We share our garden with this elderly couple and I breathe a sigh of relief when they burst into leaf

I know these two well. There they stand, side by side, rain or shine – stoic through the seasons, resolutely inseparable. We share a garden and, as I would any elderly couple, I check on them, watch them for change – and trouble myself by imagining what life would be like if we lost them.

Trees do that when you have them close. They become a part of your family. Beneath the horse chestnut, mine have camped, collected conkers, made leaf piles tall enough to disappear into. We’ve hugged it, climbed it, studied it, sometimes worriedly. I breathe a sigh of relief when the horse chestnut bursts into leaf every March, afflicted as it is with a leaf-mining moth – nothing more serious, not yet – that turns its leaves brown earlier every year.

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Country diary: these trees have become part of the family

Stamford, Lincolnshire: We share our garden with this elderly couple and I breathe a sigh of relief when they burst into leaf

I know these two well. There they stand, side by side, rain or shine – stoic through the seasons, resolutely inseparable. We share a garden and, as I would any elderly couple, I check on them, watch them for change – and trouble myself by imagining what life would be like if we lost them.

Trees do that when you have them close. They become a part of your family. Beneath the horse chestnut, mine have camped, collected conkers, made leaf piles tall enough to disappear into. We’ve hugged it, climbed it, studied it, sometimes worriedly. I breathe a sigh of relief when the horse chestnut bursts into leaf every March, afflicted as it is with a leaf-mining moth – nothing more serious, not yet – that turns its leaves brown earlier every year.

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Ahead of the curve: an eco dome by the sea

An architect’s striking home in a dome on the New Zealand coast is as visually interesting as it is groundbreaking

There is an unusual sight to be found in the small hamlet of Peka Peka, on the windswept west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. At first, it looks like a series of modest hillocks, but on closer inspection some of them have windows and small white towers rise above the landscape like periscopes.

Friedrich (“Fritz”) and Helen Eisenhofer’s idiosyncratic dwelling lies beneath the grass of these knolls; it is a prototype domestic biodome for what Fritz, a modernist architect who was trained at the Kunstakademie in Vienna, has called the Eco Home. Fritz travelled from Austria to the Pacific in 1953 to begin a career there that now spans more than half a century.

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Ahead of the curve: an eco dome by the sea

An architect’s striking home in a dome on the New Zealand coast is as visually interesting as it is groundbreaking

There is an unusual sight to be found in the small hamlet of Peka Peka, on the windswept west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. At first, it looks like a series of modest hillocks, but on closer inspection some of them have windows and small white towers rise above the landscape like periscopes.

Friedrich (“Fritz”) and Helen Eisenhofer’s idiosyncratic dwelling lies beneath the grass of these knolls; it is a prototype domestic biodome for what Fritz, a modernist architect who was trained at the Kunstakademie in Vienna, has called the Eco Home. Fritz travelled from Austria to the Pacific in 1953 to begin a career there that now spans more than half a century.

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'It satisfies a nurturing instinct': how lockdown has created a veg-growing revolution

New gardeners across UK hail mental health benefits as they get their hands dirty for the first time

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The lockdown has created a crop-growing revolution that enthusiasts say could transform how we think about nature, food security and our communities.

Growing vegetables has long been hailed as one of the most beneficial of pastimes and an initial run on vegetable seeds in the early days of the Covid-19 crisis has resulted in a bumper crop of early seedlings, which gardeners are sharing using social media and community groups to spread the good news about the “good life”.

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'It satisfies a nurturing instinct': how lockdown has created a veg-growing revolution

New gardeners across UK hail mental health benefits as they get their hands dirty for the first time

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

The coronavirus pandemic, which has led to people being trapped at home for weeks on end, has created a growing revolution that enthusiasts say could transform how we think about nature, food security and our communities.

Growing vegetables has long been hailed as one of the most beneficial of pastimes and an initial run on vegetable seeds in the early days of the Covid-19 crisis has resulted in a bumper crop of early seedlings, which gardeners are sharing using social media and community groups to spread the good news about the “good life”.

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Fresh ways to keep mint in tiptop condition

Mint is a vigorous grower so it needs plenty of space – and don’t worry if you kill it, all good gardeners have at some point

“I have even killed mint!” is a line I see at least once a week from gardening newbies. It’s a feat that is often thought of as the hallmark of a truly terrible horticulturist. Yet, as someone who has been obsessively gardening all my life, I don’t understand where this idea comes from. Far from being invincible in the hands of anyone but the most awful gardeners, mint is something I have killed over and over again, in a variety of different ways. Just enough times, in fact, to finally learn how to grow it well. Here is my advice, not only on how to successfully grow mint but, more importantly, how to give yourself a break.

Mint probably gets its reputation for being hard to kill because it has a high metabolism, which means it is a very vigorous grower. Quickly spreading to colonise large areas of ground through its subterranean runners, it will often swamp neighbouring plants as it expands outward. However, like many superhero powers, this lightning-fast metabolism is as much a curse as it is a gift. If confined to a pot, as is often the case when in the hands of first-timers starting out with gardening, mint will soon exhaust the space, filling the pot with trapped runners that spiral round the container, strangling its own growth and depleting the available nutrients. This is particularly the case in containers made of porous materials, such as terracotta, which can contribute to severe drought stress. Mint is particularly susceptible to this. Without new territory to conquer, plants quickly run out of steam. This makes them susceptible to rust, a common and untreatable fungal disease that can decimate this genus.

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