There was nothing groovy about renting stuff when I was growing up

A slick marketing scheme might not appeal to a generation priced out of home ownership

Maybe it shouldn’t come as such a huge surprise that Generation Rent… rents. John Lewis has unveiled a furniture rental service, starting at £17 a month for a desk or chair for 12 months. Similarly, Ikea announced last year that it was looking into furniture rentals and a system of environmentally friendly customer returns, embracing the circular economy.

Maybe, like me, you’re thinking: “Eh?” The rent-everything revolution has passed me by, though it’s fashionable big business. It’s not just about homes and furniture, it’s cars, technology, clothes, music, vacuum cleaners, blenders… anything! Unsurprisingly, as much as this is ideological it’s rooted in economics: home ownership is at a record low among 25- to 34-year-olds. In the UK and the US, more people are renting homes than at any point in the past 50 years, with tenants moving regularly. People either can’t afford or don’t desire Forever Furniture. Conceptually, the idea of home has morphed from ownership to flexibility and turning impermanence into a positive.

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Mexican wave: a brutalist shrine to hand-crafted design

This striking concrete house in Mexico City is full of local artists’ furniture and artwork

What does a house from the future look like? The Mexican sculptor and architect Pedro Reyes thought long and hard about what it means to build a house in the 21st century, away from a canon of modernity, classical styles and fleeting trends. He and his wife, fashion designer Carla Fernández, also wanted to avoid the usual type of architecture you find in Mexico, because “so much of it ends up looking the same”.

The result is this “future cave” – an amalgam of modern and ancient, where brutalist architecture is made from concrete in varying degrees of coarseness and yet the human hand, visible in layers of centuries-old, artisanal craft – furniture, artwork – is also evident. Minimal this is not.

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Mexican wave: a brutalist shrine to hand-crafted design

This striking concrete house in Mexico City is full of local artists’ furniture and artwork

What does a house from the future look like? The Mexican sculptor and architect Pedro Reyes thought long and hard about what it means to build a house in the 21st century, away from a canon of modernity, classical styles and fleeting trends. He and his wife, fashion designer Carla Fernández, also wanted to avoid the usual type of architecture you find in Mexico, because “so much of it ends up looking the same”.

The result is this “future cave” – an amalgam of modern and ancient, where brutalist architecture is made from concrete in varying degrees of coarseness and yet the human hand, visible in layers of centuries-old, artisanal craft – furniture, artwork – is also evident. Minimal this is not.

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How gardening helped me live with love and loss

My love of gardening is a constant comfort and has a deep resonance with my family’s history

When lockdown began, the forget-me-nots were blooming in the garden, a sea of pale blue. The lilac tree, too, was flowering, and the clematis I’d planted. They filled the air with scent as I sat outside on an unusually sunny April day, feeling fortunate to have this rented outdoor space, and thinking about my family, not knowing when I would next see them. These flowers all hold some significance for me – a lilac tree grew in the garden of my childhood home, as did clematis. There’s a photograph of me, aged about six, in a puff-sleeved dress, in front of a mass of pale pink blooms. In these strange times, the emotional resonance of plants has never felt more powerful.

The forget-me-nots came from my 86-year-old maternal grandmother Jean, my last remaining grandparent. They were the first thing I planted in this garden, four years ago. I have lived in the flat for almost a decade, but it was only in the summer of 2016 that we finally found the energy and enthusiasm to clear the 8ft-high knot of brambles. I was suffering from agoraphobia as a result of post- traumatic stress disorder, and my world had shrunk. So my then boyfriend, now husband, built me a garden. During that year, when I was frightened all the time, this sanctuary became my entire world. And so, during the pandemic, it has come to be again.

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How gardening helped me live with love and loss

My love of gardening is a constant comfort and has a deep resonance with my family’s history

When lockdown began, the forget-me-nots were blooming in the garden, a sea of pale blue. The lilac tree, too, was flowering, and the clematis I’d planted. They filled the air with scent as I sat outside on an unusually sunny April day, feeling fortunate to have this rented outdoor space, and thinking about my family, not knowing when I would next see them. These flowers all hold some significance for me – a lilac tree grew in the garden of my childhood home, as did clematis. There’s a photograph of me, aged about six, in a puff-sleeved dress, in front of a mass of pale pink blooms. In these strange times, the emotional resonance of plants has never felt more powerful.

The forget-me-nots came from my 86-year-old maternal grandmother Jean, my last remaining grandparent. They were the first thing I planted in this garden, four years ago. I have lived in the flat for almost a decade, but it was only in the summer of 2016 that we finally found the energy and enthusiasm to clear the 8ft-high knot of brambles. I was suffering from agoraphobia as a result of post- traumatic stress disorder, and my world had shrunk. So my then boyfriend, now husband, built me a garden. During that year, when I was frightened all the time, this sanctuary became my entire world. And so, during the pandemic, it has come to be again.

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How to grow dahlia cultivars

Dahlias breed unpredictable colours, but their seeds flower in their first year – and the tubers liven up soups and salads

With many supermarket dahlia tubers, you are taking a leap of faith that the image on the packet matches the contents. My Lidl purchases this spring have turned out a tad more acid-coloured than the picture suggests (but they are enjoying this summer and flowering their socks off).

One way to get round this, if you’ve grown dahlias this year, is to save some of the seed to grow next year. The mantra with dahlias is to endlessly deadhead to keep them flowering. It’s easy enough to spot the spent flower buds, which are pointy, from the unopened ones, which are blunt. So from the end of this month, you could leave a few spent heads to set to seed.

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Gardening tips: plant hardy geraniums

Get ready to combat cranefly larvae and listen to Melissa Harrison’s nature podcast

Plant this Hardy geraniums are gutsy ground cover plants that stand up to all kinds of abuse, including periods of drought, while blooming all summer long. Cultivar ‘Ann Folkard’, with its magenta and black flowers, and ‘Rozanne’, with violet blooms, are hard to beat. Height and spread: 60cm x 60cm.

Control this Beating back a cloud of craneflies (aka daddy longlegs) tapping at your windows is a pain, but the greater damage is done by their larvae, which develop under the surface of lawns and can cause brown patches. Now is the time to act: Nemasys Natural Leatherjacket Killer, is a biological control that’s watered on to the lawn in September.

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