Booking Ideas, Tips & Guides

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If you've ever had to plan for a move, then you know the urge that strikes to get rid of nearly everything you own (after all, a new house means new decor, right?).

Prepare Your Garden for Winter and a Colourful Spring

Nathan Schroder

It may seem like anything and everything is fair game to display on your open shelves, but this isn't actually the case, designers say. Some items aren't meant to sit out in the open all day long, while others are only going to be frustrating to access when placed high up.

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While I’m always sad to see the longer, lazier days of summer go away, I’m also a lifelong fan of that new school-year feeling. Although I might not enjoy my fresh box of crayons and brand-new book bag anymore, I do have two kiddos who do.

Over the past few years, Pamela Anderson has had more time to contemplate life. That is, until things kicked into high gear again—but more on that later. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, she moved from France, sold her house in Malibu, and headed north to the small town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where she was born and raised. She hunkered down with her two grown sons, Brandon and Dylan. She bought her grandmother’s old motel, renovated it, and set up her parents there. A lifelong cook, she perfected her baking skills. She reclaimed and expanded her grandfather’s garden on the same land where she had run barefoot as a self-described wild child. It’s the site of both her greatest childhood joys and harrowing traumas, which she describes candidly in her 2023 autobiography, Love, Pamela, and Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story. Almost poetically, for Pamela has journaled and written poetry her whole life, she has reclaimed her true self and her youthful creativity on the exact spot where they were born. When I had the chance to sit with her and talk over Zoom recently, our conversation quickly moved beyond her new cookbook, I Love You (due out in October), to all aspects of life—and her ability to find the deepest of meanings in even the tiniest of seeds.

Every year, Better Homes & Gardens celebrates the doers, dreamers, designers, and creators making their mark in the home, garden, and food space. This year, we were especially inspired by the next generation of influencers: The fresh faces delighting our feeds with innovative ideas and fresh, new content.

Every year, Better Homes & Gardens celebrates innovators, influencers, and creators who offer inspiration and joy in the realms of food, home, garden, and lifestyle. They're called Stylemakers. Some are household names, and others are everyday people making a difference in their corner of the world, but they're all some of our favorite creative thinkers, dreamers, and doers. Here you'll learn a bit about each 2024 Stylemaker plus their current projects and passions.

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A backyard shed is often used by homeowners to store any lawn or garden items or it's used as extra storage for items that no longer fit inside the house. Although it may be easy to throw any spare items into the shed, it also isn’t the right place for everything.

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If you love rustic or country home decor but are living in more of a modern space, there's no need to alter your aesthetic entirely. It's more than possible to artfully fuse these two styles in a way that looks cohesive and sophisticated rather than random.

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Thrifting and antiquing are great ways to decorate on a budget while expressing your own, unique style sustainably.

Antiques—not to be confused with vintage items—are a beautiful way to decorate your home with historical charm, but finding real pieces can be a challenge in today's market if you don't know what to look for.

Many interior designers are all about shopping secondhand when it comes to sourcing furniture and decor for their client projects.

Since 2003, the US has lost about half of its licensed dairy farms. However, the number of cows producing milk has stayed relatively steady. Take Wisconsin, for example. In 2004, the state was home to less than 16,000 dairy farms. In 2021, that number dropped in half, to less than 7,000 farms. But the number of cows in the state? That didn’t change. There are still about 1.2 million cows in Wisconsin. They’re just part of much bigger herds these days. That means that smaller farms are getting squeezed out in favor of industrial farming and Confined Animal Feeding Operations, commonly referred to as CAFOs, in which large numbers of animals are raised, generally in confinement, and feed is brought to them, rather than letting them graze.

The quest for a perfectly organized home can feel never-ending. Could there ever be enough bins, shelves, and organizers of all kinds to contain your everyday items? The answer: yes. You don’t need to waste money on boring storage products though. We’ve scoured our favorite retailers for storage solutions that marry functionality with flair, as well as organization with personality. They’re all under $50 too.  Scroll on for our 12 favorite sneakily-chic storage solutions. 

For the first time in decades I heard a cuckoo just the other day, its pealing “Wuck-Koo” ringing out so loudly nearby that I felt a quick, sharp jolt of joy at being so closely in its presence. Once a common sound, the distinctive call of this fleeting seasonal migrant from tropical Africa is traditionally believed to signal the arrival of spring. But as is true of so many other once-common species of birds, its numbers, which are down by an estimated 27 per cent since the early 1970s, have been in slow but steady decline for decades.

From built-in wet bars to bar carts, the idea of an at-home bar has taken many forms over the years, with members of each generation putting their own spin on an entertaining-friendly, at-home bar setup. Enter the Gen Z version: the bookcase bar.

Like phone books and VHS players, it appears box springs are joining the list of obsolete household items from our childhoods. Not to be confused with the modern bed foundation, box springs contain steel coils inside that offer a little give.

Propagating plants from seed is what hooked me into gardening. Even now, after years of watching seeds transform themselves, the magic of germination never fails to thrill me. The essence of gardening is change and the work of gardening is care. Nothing stays the same for long. The hands-on physicality of weeding, digging and planting is a great antidote to looking at a screen, which many of us are doing more than ever today.

Studio McGee

Jordan Slocum and Barry Bordelon know a thing or two about renovating a home. The couple's claim to fame was their massive renovation of a historic Brownstone in Brooklyn after dating for just seven months. This earned them the "Brownstone Boys" name, and the rest is history.

Decluttering your space is simple in theory: just sell, donate, or discard/recycle anything you don’t use or need anymore. But it's the practice of that simple theory that can be hard. 

BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine is delighted to bring you another exclusive event at Highclere Castle, the ‘real’ Downton Abbey, where you’ll be joined by Alan Titchmarsh and Lady Carnarvon.

Sponsored article from StoryKeeper

Right plant, right place, as Roy Lancaster’s book taught us, is a well-known adage and one we all try to live by. Get it right and your garden will love you for it. On closer inspection that phrase belies a whole historical context that is not evident at first sight. I was reminded recently of the stark fact that most of the plants we have in our gardens are from somewhere else. From Asia, the Antipodes, South Africa, to the Americas and continental Europe, these continents have supplied us for centuries with plants that fill our green spaces. Many are now so familiar and yet two hundred plus years ago they arrived as exotic specimens, delighting the Victorians and their predecessors.

As we head towards Autumn, join us in our third BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair, in the picturesque grounds of English Heritage’s Audley End House and Gardens, in Essex, from Friday 30 August to Sunday 1 September, 2024.

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In 2008, Jessica Eikleberry was 29 years old and had just read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. She wanted to start eating locally and, with the help of her mom, she made a goal for the coming Thanksgiving: an all-local meal.

At the back of the house, Adirondack chairs are placed beside a border with a small standard wisteria, a box spiral and purple Iris ‘Art Deco’ set off by lime-green euphorbia. An unknown red rose on the wall is from Mark Rumary’s 1960s scheme.

Cameron Trimble