Happy accidents and garden interlopers | Allan Jenkins

The order of the plot is disrupted by a colour clash from self-seeded fennel, amaranth and orache

A quiet word this week in favour of accidentals – plants that pop up where you least expect them. An inconvenient growth, if you will.

I suspect most gardeners are split into neat freaks who micro-manage; those more comfortable with a wilder way to grow; and the rest who operate in between but may aspire to a tighter or looser style.

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A guide to selling your property Nottingham Estate Agents

There’s no doubt that moving home is up there with life’s most stressful events. Not only is there the emotional and physical upheaval to deal with, there’s the legal complexity, admin marathon and uncertainty around whether you’ll actually cross the finish line that can leave nerves feeling frayed. ‘When you are thinking of placing your […]

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Landlords slash rents by up to 20% as tenants quit city centres in pandemic

‘Race to suburbia’ and a lack of foreign students see rental demand plummet in wake of Covid-19

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Private rents in some parts of London have tumbled by up to 20% as tenants quit the capital, the number of international students plummets and companies put relocation plans on hold.

A glut of rental properties on the market means many landlords have had to slash rents in order to attract tenants. While leading estate agents say average rents in London are down by perhaps 4% on a year ago, or 6% to 7% in the so-called “prime” areas, these figures mask much bigger falls in certain locations as Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc on the lettings market.

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From simple actions to self-reliance: Josh Byrne's sustainable home upgrades for every budget

Retrofitting your house or apartment to use less energy doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise

Improving the sustainability performance of your home can bring big benefits. Firstly, an energy-efficient home is more comfortable, requiring less heating and cooling. It is more cost-effective to run, saving you money through reduced bills. Then there’s the environmental benefits.

By reducing energy imported from the grid and replacing this with locally generated solar energy, you can dramatically reduce household carbon emissions. There are plenty of other things that can be done to improve the sustainability of your home too, from installing water-saving features and low-energy appliances through to choosing low-impact building materials when renovating.

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From simple actions to self-reliance: Josh Byrne's sustainable home upgrades for every budget

Retrofitting your house or apartment to use less energy doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise

Improving the sustainability performance of your home can bring big benefits. Firstly, an energy-efficient home is more comfortable, requiring less heating and cooling. It is more cost-effective to run, saving you money through reduced bills. Then there’s the environmental benefits.

By reducing energy imported from the grid and replacing this with locally generated solar energy, you can dramatically reduce household carbon emissions. There are plenty of other things that can be done to improve the sustainability of your home too, from installing water-saving features and low-energy appliances through to choosing low-impact building materials when renovating.

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Why The Home Edit shouldn’t judge a book by its cover

The presenters of Netflix’s decluttering show like to organise books by colour, which suggests not much reading is going on

One genre that stands as a surprising survivor of the great binge-watching explosion is the tidying-up show, which has evolved from its finger-wagging “have you tried putting vinegar on it”, How Clean Is Your House? roots to become a massive industry of Marie Kondo-inspired decluttering, all elastic bands, labels and packed plastic boxes. Snooping around a messy house about to become so neat that I refuse to believe anyone could so much as make a cup of tea and keep it that way is so appealing to viewers that there is a newcomer to the game.

Joanna Teplin and Clea Shearer are the founders of a company called The Home Edit, and have taken their “professional organiser” skills to Netflix for Get Organized with The Home Edit, in which they go into famous people’s houses, and some regular people’s houses, and organise them to within an inch of their lives. This most unassuming of series has stoked a debate so divisive it has the potential to split families down the middle. “Our intention is to give people the tools to make a system that’s smart, sustainable and also beautiful,” says Teplin, at the beginning of the series. And yet, they are advocates of the rainbow bookshelf.

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Heart and sole: a shoe designer’s Paris home

Daring colour mixes, striking furniture and footwear as decoration are the hallmarks of this townhouse in the 20th arrondissement

There’s something childish in the way I use colour,” says Gherardo Felloni, creative director of Roger Vivier. “In the last 20 years, designers went for beige or grey – safe colours. I am completely the opposite. I am spontaneous, and not afraid.”

Step into his three-storey townhouse in the magical Campagne à Paris, a village of cobbled streets and Narnia lampposts in the 20th arrondissement to the east of the city centre, and daring mixes await. A painting of deep and luminous blues hangs in the more formal of two sitting rooms, a pair of 1960s tubular glass sconces originally from the palatial waiting room of the monumental Milan Centrale railway station either side of it. “They are massive, and quite special,” says Felloni, whose comparatively modest home was built as part of a development of 92 houses in the 1920s for working-class families.

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