Gardenig in Italy. Tips & Guides

The Japanese art of growing miniature versions of beautiful trees is perfect if you wish to fill your home with stunning greenery without compromising space. Let us look at the 14 Oldest Bonsai Trees in the World to inspire you.

If you have always wanted to know about the names of Zucchini in Different Languages, then this informative list has all the details!

Join our tailor-made tour of beautiful gardens in Kent and Sussex, full of early summer colour, and enjoy three nights at the four-star East Sussex National Hotel.

From the classic curly and flat-leaf types to unique options like Hamburg and Japanese, explore how these Different Types of Parsley Varieties can elevate your culinary creations!

Believe it or not, 2024 is approaching fast, and so are the new year’s trends. You may want to start paying close attention to what’s in now, especially since styles come and go so quickly—remember Pampas grass and ombre? One of this year's most captivating predictions is hypnotic design, a style that includes a loosely patterned, intricate wood veneer. Its hypnotic look takes center stage, even when used on smaller pieces of furniture. Hypnotic design started in the 1980s with Ettore Sottsass, the pioneer of the Memphis design movement. This design era was developed in response to the low-key minimalism of mid-century modern decor that was popular in the 1950s and early 1960s—and is still on trend today.

Although the government’s Council of Economic Advisors confirms that food inflation rates have been cooling, the average household will spend about 6 percent more this year on food than last year, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, it’s still an excellent time to tap into the powers of our best budget-friendly tips for healthy eating.

When browsing kitchens and baths on TikTok or Instagram, you’ve likely noticed a proliferation of boldly veined marble taking over your feed. If you are intrigued by this statement-making stone, let us introduce you to Calacatta Viola marble.

You might be able to guess by the look of our pasta recipe archives, but here at Better Homes and Gardens, we love to use our noodles. From zoodles and gluten-free to stovetop mac and spaghetti, we’re definitely pro pasta. 

Vote now, and pick the garden you’d like to win this year’s People’s Choice award for the Gardens of the Year Competition 2023, sponsored by Yeo Valley. Take a look at this year’s finalists, and vote for your favourite below. Voting closes at noon on Monday 6 November.

Chrysanthemum Display Ideas Indoors – Brace yourself for a visual treat of vibrant blooms and innovative displays! Explore simple yet stunning ideas that will transform any space!

We’re off to Pennsylvania today to enjoy fall in Rhonda Molin’s garden.

Cindy Strickland has shared on the GPOD before (Gardening for a Friend), and today she’s taking us along to visit a beautiful English garden.

Arugula seeds are always on my “to-plant” list. I enjoy the spicy, peppery flavor of the serrated leaves, harvesting them to add to salads and stir-fries, or to put on pizza. Arugula flowers are their own delicacy, adding a unique flavor to savory dishes. In this article, I’m going to share some tips on getting the most out of your arugula harvest, what to do with the flowers, and how to save the seeds to grow more.

Montes & Clark has teamed up with The English Garden to offer one lucky reader the chance to win a dinner party bundle, worth £126.

From deep royal purples to delicate lavender hues, each variety boasts unique characteristics that will entice both your taste buds and your garden. So, join us in this vibrant exploration and find out how these Purple Cauliflower wonders can add color, nutrition, and excitement to your life!

Imagine harvesting vibrant, violet-hued pods that are not only a visual feast but also packed with nutrients and flavor. Whether you’re spicing up a stir-fry or looking to add a splash of color to your garden, Purple Beans are your ticket to an extraordinary experience.

If you want a culinary and nutritional powerhouse, then don’t miss Portobello Mushrooms. Whether you’re grilling, stuffing, or sautéeing, this versatile fungi offers more than just a meaty texture; it’s a treasure trove of flavor and health benefits.

Discover the secret to a flourishing garden by pairing your tomato plants with companion plants that offer mutual benefits. From pest control to nutrient enhancement, the right Plants with Tomatoes can elevate your tomatoes from good to great.

These Pink Pumpkins aren’t just a deviation from the norm; they’re an invitation to rethink seasonal decor and embrace the unexpected. Get ready to uncover the secrets of these rosy-hued wonders and explore captivating ideas for incorporating them into your surroundings.

Header image: Lupinus albus (altramuces o chochitos), by Calapito via Wikimedia Commons.

Steep sand dunes punctured by clusters of beachgrass, frothy sea depositing razor clams and small conches for the eagle-eyed to eagerly gather along tranquil stretches of beach, and towering pines that buffer peerless coastline from swathes of parkland, a trip to Norfolk has long been de rigueur for holiday makers who appreciate its quaint chocolate box villages, abundant countryside and proximity to the sea. 

Garlic has been with us since Roman times – just visit any Italian restaurant to get an understanding of how central the flavour is to their dishes. At Glanbrydan (in West Wales) we love to use it in our own cooking as well as adding it to many of the fillings of the baked pasties and pies we sell.

Brain and I are a bit tired at the moment, so I don’t really feel like writing up my Home Front garden plan, but there is one. Well, there’s a list of crops we want to eat (and hence grow) next year, which is the start of a plan. It’s enough to get me to an active stage of planning – stocking up on seeds ahead of any big Brexit-related rush.

Well, it’s the last day of National Gardening Week, and I hope you’ve been enjoying the vicarious harvests from my garden! I have enjoyed really focusing on what’s in season, and what we should be (and are!) harvesting and eating. It’s easy for me to forget that this garden is still very young, and it’s still maturing and I am still learning its quirks.

We don’t really eat fresh tomatoes in this house, and as a rule I don’t tend to grow them. Last year I was tempted by a trio of unusual flavoured tomatoes from Wyevale, but they were tall and needy things that wanted constant watering. I didn’t notice any significant difference between the flavours of the ones we did eat; I gave most of the fruit away. When I had a juicer I would grow cherry tomatoes and make tomato juice; the chickens loved the leftover pulp. (And yes, if you juice yellow tomatoes you get yellow tomato juice.)

If there’s a plant that’s destined to explode onto the Grow Your Own scene this year, then it has to be agretti (Salsola soda). Agretti got good press last year as being a vegetable sought-after by chefs; it didn’t hurt that seed was in short supply! Suppliers have taken note, however, and there are plenty more sources this year.

Header image: *Psyche Delia*/Flickr, CC BY-NC

At the beginning of May this year, the UK media took note of an unusual case in Italy’s highest court – a homeless man originally found guilty of theft, and sentenced to six months in jail and a €100 fine, was acquitted. The new verdict determined that as he had only stolen a small amount of food because he was desperately hungry, he had not committed a crime.

Ever since we watched Away, Ryan and I have a new toast: “To Mars”. Unlike that fictional crew, we have no hope of ever reaching the red planet. But there are an increasing number of days when I think it would be nice to leave humanity’s mess behind and start afresh on a new world. But the prospect of forming a colony elsewhere in the solar system is a long way off, and when people talk about life on Mars they’re usually referring to alien life. 

One of the great challenges, during our summer of waiting to move, has been feeding ourselves. We packed away a lot of the ‘unnecessary’ cooking equipment for a few weeks, only to find it was out of action for a few months. With numerous false starts, I kept running down the cupboards and the freezer, in anticipation of a move date that never came. Stress levels rose, cooking mojo vanished and we ate far more oven chips than you can imagine.

I haven’t been doing a lot of cooking since my Inner Womble made beer bread a few weeks ago, and in fact the remaining breadcrumbs are still in the freezer. But now I am freelance and I have a bit more time and energy to experiment, and am keen to Womble my way through the stack of ingredients that’s lurking around in the kitchen.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.

Guy Singh-Watson of Riverford Organics is warning about the risks of Brexit-related disruptions to our food supply, timed to coincide with the ‘Hungry Gap‘. He says “to be told by people who have no idea how their food is produced that this is ‘project fear’ makes me incandescent with rage”. Farmers and seasoned gardeners will be nodding their heads, but everyone else may be a little perplexed. What’s the Hungry Gap?

What kind of traveller are you? Do you prefer to lie in a hammock slung between two palm trees, reading the latest blockbuster novel? Or would I find you soaking up the local culture along with the sun? I’m more of the latter, and it helps to know a smattering of the local language if you go off the beaten track!

Header image: Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti aboard the International Space Station. NASA

When ESA’s new Vega C rocket blasted off from French Guiana for the first time, on 13 July 2022, it carried an Italian garden into space.