Getting your dream outdoor space is now easier — and cheaper

Following the pandemic, competition for landscapers and outdoor contractors was fierce. Homeowners are finally back in control.

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A beginner’s guide to vegetable gardening

Anyone can grow vegetables, whether it’s in a big backyard or a tiny window box.

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Milanese makeover: 1930s factory to stylish showroom and home

A warehouse space in the Italian city has been cleverly transformed with original features and a mix of styles

Milan isn’t a city short of personality, but it is short on homes with personality that haven’t already been developed into brand-new boltholes or snapped up by the cool crowd. Luckily for Elisa Vassalli, the area of Isola, northwest of the centre, still has a few secret spaces up its sleeve, which is how she ended up finding her former textiles factory home.

“We saw a lot of apartments, but this one was really different to everything else,” says the interior designer, who shares the space with her carpenter and set designer husband, Davide. The factory was built in the 1930s and they are the first couple to make it their home. “We loved that it hadn’t been touched, because we wanted to have a space with a story. It was very important for us because we love the memories of a space and respecting it.”

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On my radar: Alison Balsom’s cultural highlights

The classical trumpeter on a complex marital drama, an uncompromising violinist and a garden that feels like stepping back in time

Alison Balsom is an award-winning classical trumpeter. Born in Hertfordshire in 1978, she began playing the trumpet at seven and graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2001. Her debut album was released the following year; she won best female artist at the 2009 and 2011 Classical Brit awards. She lives in London with her husband, director Sam Mendes, and their two children. Balsom gives the UK premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Trumpet Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra on 11 April at the Barbican and 12 April at Bristol Beacon, and with RSNO at Usher Hall on 18 August as part of the Edinburgh international festival.

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Busy sowing seeds? It pays to look ahead

Thinking about how you plant your spring seeds now will make it easier to save them come autumn

It’s spring! The equinox has passed and so the days will be longer than the nights for the next six months. No matter what the weather throws at us (and it’s highly probable that there are frosty mornings still to come), we are categorically in spring. And I’d bet that you, like your fellow gardeners, are busy sowing seeds. Peas, beetroot, lettuce, radishes, spring onions, kohlrabi and more can be sown now.

This time last year, I wrote about the magic of growing plants from seed and this hopeful gesture is an ideal practice to celebrate the return of the light. But this season I want to suggest, as you nudge your seeds into compost, that you contemplate the other end of their life cycle and plan to save their seeds for future years.

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WEDDING DETAILS.....

I am stuck sitting in my office while my cleaning people are here....so I thought I would share a few things with you! Last weekend I was invited to a beautiful wedding and it was pretty amazing!  I have to say that my client did not leave out any details! I was in a bit of a dither about what to wear and I posted a dress on Instagram that I had ordered from Zara.  It was a

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How can it be legal to chop down trees? | Letters

Cath Attlee and Nancy Clarke are both suffering from what Damien Gayle calls ‘solastalgia’ after their gardens were torn apart by others

Oh how I recognised and felt what Damien Gayle described in his article (My neighbour tore down the hedge outside our window – and I learned what ‘solastalgia’ feels like, 23 September). Our house used to have four mature trees, including two lilac on one side and an apple tree and beautiful bushes on the other. The area where our gardens met was full of birds, insects and squirrels, and provided a great play area for our cats. Like Damien, we came back from holiday to find the trees cut down and bushes cleared.

A few weeks later, a similar slaughter happened on the other side. Discussion with the council confirmed that there is nothing we can do to prevent such destruction on privately owned land, unless it is a conservation area. This, despite the council’s commitment to improving our environment and air quality. While they plant trees in the street, absentee landlords cut them down in urban gardens. I weep!
Cath Attlee
London

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