Queen sends wrong message on masks | Brief letters

Clothes for gardening | The Queen | Consultants’ fees | Older readers | John Crace

This is what I wear to garden in: a T-shirt from the London Greenpeace “What’s Wrong with McDonald’s” campaign, acquired in about 1995; jeans from a charity shop and customised with cyanotype splashes; fleece from a Keswick outdoor shop in about 1993; old shoes – just everyday ones that are too worn out for other wear. I don’t buy a £380 cardigan to garden in (Hort couture, 17 October).
Jane Lewis
Edinburgh

• It’s a shame that the Queen did not wear a mask on her visit to Porton Down (Report, 15 October). In neglecting to do so, she failed to set an example to those who, in insisting on the “freedom” to refuse to wear a mask, are in fact claiming the licence to put others at risk.
Dr Lynda Mountford
St Albans, Hertfordshire

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Queen sends wrong message on masks | Brief letters

Clothes for gardening | The Queen | Consultants’ fees | Older readers | John Crace

This is what I wear to garden in: a T-shirt from the London Greenpeace “What’s Wrong with McDonald’s” campaign, acquired in about 1995; jeans from a charity shop and customised with cyanotype splashes; fleece from a Keswick outdoor shop in about 1993; old shoes – just everyday ones that are too worn out for other wear. I don’t buy a £380 cardigan to garden in (Hort couture, 17 October).
Jane Lewis
Edinburgh

• It’s a shame that the Queen did not wear a mask on her visit to Porton Down (Report, 15 October). In neglecting to do so, she failed to set an example to those who, in insisting on the “freedom” to refuse to wear a mask, are in fact claiming the licence to put others at risk.
Dr Lynda Mountford
St Albans, Hertfordshire

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Bohemian rhapsody: designer Alice Temperley’s whimsical Somerset home

Alice Temperley’s designs are filled with colour and romance – just like her historic house

Back in the spring, fashion designer Alice Temperley was scouring online marketplace Preloved for vintage fabric and ended up in the pet section. “Within an hour, I had driven five miles up the road and come home with a house rabbit. Florence is an amazing character, either very rampant or very cuddly. She lives under the piano in the sitting room, where we all hang out.”

“We” is Temperley and Fox, her 11-year-old son, any chickens who “just come into the house when they feel like it” and of course Florence. The four llamas live outside. “They’ve always got their heads just slightly over the garden wall.”

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Revealed: Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire

Documents reveal UAE president owns multibillion-pound property portfolio spanning London’s most expensive neighbourhoods

The row of 1960s-built houses with untidy gardens on a quiet cul-de-sac near Richmond upon Thames appears to have little in common with Ecuador’s red-brick embassy in Knightsbridge, where Julian Assange spent seven years in hiding, just across the road from Harrods.

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Bohemian rhapsody: designer Alice Temperley’s whimsical Somerset home

Alice Temperley’s designs are filled with colour and romance – just like her historic house

Back in the spring, fashion designer Alice Temperley was scouring online marketplace Preloved for vintage fabric and ended up in the pet section. “Within an hour, I had driven five miles up the road and come home with a house rabbit. Florence is an amazing character, either very rampant or very cuddly. She lives under the piano in the sitting room, where we all hang out.”

“We” is Temperley and Fox, her 11-year-old son, any chickens who “just come into the house when they feel like it” and of course Florence. The four llamas live outside. “They’ve always got their heads just slightly over the garden wall.”

Continue reading...

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Grow moss to give you a green lift all year round

Heres’s a horticulture happy pill just when you need it most

I’m a fair weather gardener. As someone who works in horticulture I am supposed to claim that each season has its own wonder and that I embrace all the changes nature offers, but that wouldn’t be honest. As temperatures and light levels plummet, the growth of the vast majority of plants grinds to a halt. This means that if you get a mood boost from living green, winter can be tough. However, there is one much-overlooked group of plants that does the exact opposite, bursting into life just as most garden residents are slipping into dormancy. Moss provides you with a horticulture happy pill just when you need it most.

Mosses are an ancient group of plants that don’t follow the rules of other garden species. Their growth rate isn’t so much determined by light and heat, but by the availability of moisture – and that is something we don’t lack at this time of year. Given the right conditions, their rugged constitution makes them incredibly easy to propagate and establish. And they can be sourced for little to no money.

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Grow moss to give you a green lift all year round

Heres’s a horticulture happy pill just when you need it most

I’m a fair weather gardener. As someone who works in horticulture I am supposed to claim that each season has its own wonder and that I embrace all the changes nature offers, but that wouldn’t be honest. As temperatures and light levels plummet, the growth of the vast majority of plants grinds to a halt. This means that if you get a mood boost from living green, winter can be tough. However, there is one much-overlooked group of plants that does the exact opposite, bursting into life just as most garden residents are slipping into dormancy. Moss provides you with a horticulture happy pill just when you need it most.

Mosses are an ancient group of plants that don’t follow the rules of other garden species. Their growth rate isn’t so much determined by light and heat, but by the availability of moisture – and that is something we don’t lack at this time of year. Given the right conditions, their rugged constitution makes them incredibly easy to propagate and establish. And they can be sourced for little to no money.

Continue reading...

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