#heritage-plants

#heritage-plants

Research consistently shows that access to green space can significantly boost wellbeing, with studies linking time spent in gardens and parks to lower cortisol levels, improved mood, and sharper cognitive function.

Hanging baskets brimming with multicolored blooms make attractive additions to your patio or terrace, creating a lush environment even in a small balcony.

Around a third of UK gardeners use pesticides, and our studies found that house sparrow numbers, for example, were nearly 40% lower in gardens where the pesticide metaldehyde was used. By reducing pesticide use, you can actively encourage birds back into your outdoor spaces, as they rely on invertebrates such as slugs and snails as natural prey.

Rather than representing a simple return to the past, this renewed interest reflects a broader reconsideration of how architecture engages with materials, local resources, and environmental conditions.

Where multi-story apartment buildings are now being constructed once stood the Butcher family orchard. The farm had been in the family since 1881, when Rolla and Emma Butcher bought 160 acres of land. After Rolla's early death, Emma ran the farm by herself, planting fruit trees while raising her young children.

Starting an edible garden can make it easier for you to eat healthy and avoid rising grocery costs. You have access to fresh, organic fruits and veggies right outside your door.

Raised beds provide access to fresh food, even organic veggies and fruits if you choose, for a fraction of grocery store prices.

Garden angelica, Angelica archangelica, belongs to the Apiaceae family, the same botanical group as carrots, celery, fennel, and parsley. Like its relatives, it produces a large, distinctively umbrella-shaped inflorescence, or flower cluster, called umbels. In its first year, the plant forms a lower mound of bright green leaves. In the second, a thick, hollow stem shoots upward and unfurls the broad green flower heads that resemble wild carrot or Queen Anne's Lace.

Nature is truly amazing, but it is also terrifying. Being the homebody that I am, I'm always wondering what would happen if I were ever in a situation where I'd have to survive out in the wild. It's tough out there, y'all. And it's important to know how to make it out alive. Do you think you have what it takes? Take this quiz to find out if you're a born forest lover, or you're better off on the couch like I am. Let's go!

Lots of pressure at this time of year, isn't there? All those pink cheeks and sweaty brows puffing their way around the park in dusted-down trainers; all those Botivo mocktails (delicious, for what it's worth) as we strive to self-improve during one of the most grisly months of the year. I've never really been one for resolutions, nor time-measured sobriety (amazing how having small children deflates one's desire to drink enough to conjure a hangover).

You are not alone: social media is full of claims that soaking banana skins in water makes a fertiliser that will give you bigger leaves and better blooms. The hack Put banana peels in a jar of water, leave them to sit, then pour the liquid on your plants. Bananas do contain potassium and small amounts of other nutrients. The snag is you have no idea how strong it is or what's missing.

To an unimaginable eye, a seed looks inert. Yet they are packed with genetic information and biological processes poised to unfold. All it takes is the right configuration of signals and stimuli from the environment to let them know it's time to dare to grow.

People grow asparagus from crowns because it shortens the long wait times for harvesting. From seed, you'll need to wait three years before harvesting asparagus. Some people consider that a waste of time. The tradeoff is that you can keep harvesting every spring for up to 15 years or more. If you plant crowns, you get a one-year jump on things. However, those crowns may have soil-borne diseases you don't know about, so there is a risk involved. Seeds remove that problem.

As concepts such as "regenerative" and "biodynamic" continue to enter the mainstream coffee lexicon, scientists continue to literally dig into the soil to give them meaning. A recent peer-reviewed study from India's Western Ghats argues that one of the clearest signals of healthy, sustainable coffee farms lies in the ground itself, with organic coffee soils performing better than soils from conventional farms treated with synthetic inputs.

When you think of farming, what ingredients do you generally associate with a successful harvest? The basics certainly come to mind: fertile soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of water. But there are other variables that can also mean the difference between a crop of healthy fruits and vegetables and a large heap of organic waste. And it turns out that one of those variables is a very small hawk.