Why the Astronaut Space Salad Might Be the Perfect Meal

Is there any better feeling than a successful summer garden party? All your friends in one place, laughing and socialising in the summer sun. What's not to love?

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Hedges are a classic garden feature. They’re a beautiful way to mark a boundary that avoids the blandness of garden fences and these living walls can dampen noise pollution, soak up groundwater, and provide a windbreak. Hedgerows are also a vital habitat for British wildlife, providing both food and shelter, so regular maintenance is an ecological as well as aesthetic necessity. Hand shears are a simple way to trim but if you have a lot of hedges or mobility issues, powered trimmers make the job much easier and quicker.

Better Homes & Gardens

If you ask people what plant they would take into space (which I do, quite a bit), a significant number of them answer potatoes, because they can’t imagine a life without French fries (chips, if you’re British). The only problem with that is that, so far, no one has worked out how to make fries in space. The International Space Station doesn’t have a deep fat fryer, and you can imagine the health & safety nightmare that would be in microgravity. In The Martian, Mark Watney has to make do with a microwave, and rues the day he runs out of ketchup.

Freezing peas is easy, and a great way to keep them on hand for adding to your favorite recipes all year round.

It’s not until you get to Australia that you realise that eucalyptus has adapted itself to just about  every type of climate variation – wet, dry, mountainous and marine – everywhere we went there seemed to a eucalyptus that was adapted to the habitat. We saw snow gums in the  Snowy Mountains, towering 100ft specimens in the rainforests and admired the marvellously mottled trunks of those fringing the Pacific Ocean.

A Tiny Pocket of Japanese Perfection In amongst the commercial stands on Eastern Avenue there’s a rather charming display of plants, each one encased in moss balls.  I particularly loved this daisy.  I would like to tell you more about them, but the Japanese men who were manning the stall were charming but spoke little English.

Where the Wild Things Grow Given the right conditions, there aren’t many gardeners who wouldn’t love to establish a wildflower meadow somewhere in their garden, but the reality is that starting from scratch can be a lengthy and tricky process. Read about it in one of the many books or features written on the topic – and you may well decide that it is all far too much trouble.

The New Urban Green ‘The New Urban Green’ is a celebration of the tucked away, the overlooked and the greened-up edges of our urban areas captured over 10 years by the photographer Jane Sebire and writer Caroline Beck. Gardens within prisons; asylum seekers growing home tastes from abroad on northern allotments; canals transformed into public parks; housing estates becoming English meadows – small, extraordinary delights in ordinary places cared for by visionaries, enthusiasts and the simply curious.

The Life Aquatic With the welcome arrival of spring, it’s not just the beds and borders that are bursting with life – ponds and water features where nothing much seems to have happened for the past few months – are showing signs of returning plant and animal activity. Before everything grows to the point where interference would be harmful, it is a good time to do some watery housework.

I stayed at www.leclosauxroses.fr – a very comfortable restaurant with rooms in the heart of the village. The food was delicious. I was much relieved to be assured that the bells on the nearby church stop ringing at 11pm and don’t start again until 8am the next morning. This is a place to relax, there’s little in the way of shops other than a boulangerie, a book shop and a few discreet art  and craft galleries – the highlights are the plants and the traditional lavoir. I did discover a plant I now have a serious yen for – Campsis grandiflora ‘Morning Calm’. It isn’t available in the UK, but I am on the search for a source.  Ok, it can grow to 10metres, but I have a perfect spot where I can let it rampage away and reward me with its glorious flowers.