FIVE Ideas, Tips & Guides

As we’re faced with another year of determining what's for dinner, we're sharing a glimpse at how BHG readers gather for a meal. Welcome to our new series, Dinner Diaries, where we're asking readers to anonymously share how they get dinner on the table including grocery shopping, budgeting, cooking, and their favorite family recipes. Here, a family of five enjoys tacos, spaghetti, bulgogi, and other dishes from around the world.

Not all shades are fair game in every room of the home—interior designers are adamant that some home decor items are better off left neutral in color. If you're planning on purchasing some accent decor or piece of furniture for your home, you'll want to be mindful that bright colors are not always the answer.

41 Exceptional Philodendron Varieties

These blossoms, varying from the sunniest yellows to the deepest golds, can be a great addition to both garden and pots!

Would you believe we’re now going into our third year in our ‘new’ garden? I’m not sure where that time went!

With the right care and growing conditions, it’s possible to get your moth orchid to flower multiple times in a year. In this video guide, house plant expert, Jane Perrone explains how to get the basics right when looking after orchids.

Many of the worst garden weeds can quickly take over your garden during the growing season. Weeds start growing earlier in the year than many garden plants, in early spring – so be sure to get on top of them early before they get out of hand.

Joan Galloway is sharing the most recent phase of her gardening life with us today.

Most vegetable gardeners lucky enough to have the use of a greenhouse use it for raising seeds early in the year, extending the season into the autumn, and of course growing tomatoes and cucumbers in the height of the summer. If you’d like to find something a little more exciting when you open the greenhouse door, these unusual crops will appreciate the extra heat.

I love growing unusual edible plants – not only are they potentially useful and easy to grow (because the pests and diseases they suffer from are not widespread), but they can be beautiful too.

The sun has finally made an appearance, and it’s time to start hardening off all of those plants that will soon be living outside. I won’t be growing courgettes this summer, but I bought some the other day on a whim and then had to figure out something to do with them.

Header image: Ella and Nicki at the Mars Desert Research Station. Provided by the author.

Emma White, University of Surrey and Sarah Golding, University of Surrey

Header image: Phil Sellens, CC BY

Coaxing roses to produce a spectacular floral display is easy if you follow a few simple rules.

Planting in shade can be a real blessing. Not only can you choose from beautiful and varied plants for dappled, partial and deep shade, but the soil in shady areas is often packed with nutrient-rich leaf mould.

The best trees for chalk soil conditions tend to be locally grown and not be Dutch imports. In fact they resemble shrubs more than trees but there are the odd exception that are tree like.

There are potentially as many soils as there are gardens but they can be classified into five types. Heavy Clay Soil Minute particles of clay stick together in a gluey mess when wet and go rock hard when dry. Often clay soil is very fertile. Clay soils can be improved with drainage, coarse grit, or the addition of coarse organic matter as humus.

There is a whole new language to be embraced when you first start to garden. We have just selected 5 gardening terms that you may come across.

In this series of ‘fives for New Gardeners’ I have limited the number of photographs I have included but I am proud that I grew this African Violet from a leaf rooted in water. Gardening includes a bit of pride so I am happy enough for now.

A colony of Foxgloves not a skulk or earth as in Foxes

Pentas are semi-tropical shrubs grown as annuals that will be ideal if we have a long warm summer. (What is one of those I hear you ask?) They may last through a mild winter and gradually become a woody a 3 foot high shrub .

Bulbs are commonly understood as plant storage devices and here the term bulb is used to cover various forms of dormant plants.

No matter the time of year, freshly cut flowers will always bring a sense of joy and natural beauty into any room. Fresh bouquets in water — whether grown ourselves or gifted — are normally at their best for a couple of weeks, but blooms will be fleeting and are usually thrown away once they start to lose their colour and wilt. So, a question that I’m asked a lot is simply — ‘How can I make my flowers last longer?’ The answer lies in the art of drying flowers — a craft that I’ve been immersed in for the past seven years. Dried floral arrangements will bring a different aesthetic to interiors compared to fresh — they are not for everyone — but if you like the look, you can very easily prolong the beauty of your flowers by months — even years — by creating striking arrangements that celebrate floral structures and will add interest to mantelpieces, dining tables, sideboards — you name it — throughout the seasons.

Is it week five? To be honest, I haven’t a clue any more, it’s all merging together.

The season of late sunsets, swims in the sea and garden parties, summer is a joyous time, full of late sunsets, refreshing swims in the sea, blue skies and balmy weather. Also attendant to these warmer months are the myriad flowers on display no matter where you go: there are sweet-smelling peonies in Tesco, hydrangeas flowering on front lawns and ruby red zinnias sprouting in every park and field. To make the most of the the season's floral bounty, we've rounded up five simple flower arrangements perfect for a summer bouquet from the House & Garden archive.

Lawns are a British institution, just like strawberries and cream, teatime, and cricket. But in modern day Britain, the average person spends 90% of their time indoors — on tiles, carpets, and hardwood floors.